When the Last Road Ends
by plumdarling
Summary: The ring obeyed and betrayed its gentlest bearer, and the battle took no notice. Canon divergence AU; expansive exploration in the would-be differences in Middle-earth and the War of the Ring if it was Bilbo who had died at the Battle of Five Armies. Focuses on the Company, the rule of Durin's sons, and Gandalf's curiosity about the pretty ring left in the pocket of Bilbo's corpse.
1. In Recovery

Before we start, I'd like to thank anyone who attempts to read this! It really means quite a lot to me!

This work has been cross-posted from AO3, and it's going to be a very expansive exploration into all the changes in Arda if it was Bilbo who had died during the Battle of the Five Armies, rather than the stubbornly-grumpy Thorin Oakenshield (who still has not repented his words to Bilbo at the Gate of Erebor), along with Thorin's two heirs. There is going to be quite a lot of graphic violence and depictions of death in certain chapters.

I'm a bit of a Tolkien nerd, so there will be quite a lot of interlocking with the War of the Ring (in _The Lord of the Rings_) and later on, we'll have quite a few _Silmarillion _references, especially when we follow more of Gandalf's narration. When it comes to book vs movie canon, I really did enjoy the movies and their expansion on certain details that couldn't be detailed in the books, and you'll certainly see a lot of inspiration I've taken from the movies, especially in the characterization of some of the minor members of the Company. When it comes to book vs movie discrepancies, they'll usually be circumlocuted.

Also, this is largely a work-in-progress, and it's been a rather difficult one due to the fact that I'm basically trying to rewrite the history of the Third Age while trying to keep close to the canon timeline and what exactly would happen in this work compared to canon, keeping in mind the politics of Middle-earth. I'm still looking for a beta reader for this fic; someone who doesn't mind long ramble-y passages about battles and and soldiers and history and characters and culture. If you'd like to beta, message me here or at my tumblr ( .vu)! I'll also be talking about the plot and the decisions I made in this fic on my tumblr, so you can shoot me questions there too.

If you can, please do leave a comment! It really does reassure me to know that someone likes my work! Thank you again, and I wish you well on this journey.

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PROLOGUE

The hobbit's sword was still, and his free hand hung loose at his side as he stared and learnt of how exactly corpses could fall, from up on the peak of Ravenhill.

The sky held hope, and sweeping avian shapes behind the clouds were growing nearer, but he could not see them. His ring glinted atop his finger in the red winter sun, but he could only stand, invisible, and listen to the sound of blades parting flesh and the cries of the warriors.

In the old days, when adventures had consisted of sitting around hearths and telling fantastical tales, or curling in armchairs absorbed in legends recorded in his many books, he had thought of elves as deathless. He had thought of dwarves as tough as stone and impervious to weapons, and of men as warsome and fearless. He knew better now. He had seen dwarves cut down like saplings, and men lying in pools of red and black blood. There was an elvish corpse at his side, fair face distorted, lovely auburn hair askew from a broken helm, a red tongue hanging from an open mouth.

_I would give anything for it to end_, he thought in misery, Sting slipping from his hand, hanging only by his fingertips, and all Tookishness in him shrank and shriveled._ I care not for all of Smaug's wretched treasure, or the light of the Arkenstone—I would give it all to be away from such a bad end. I would give—_from the corner of his eye, his ring glinted once more—_I would give _this ring _to be away from here, for them all to live, for peace to come—_

And politely, almost obediently, his lovely golden ring, which had for so long dwelt with Gollum under the Misty Mountains, slipped quietly off his finger and landed heavily in his waistcoat pocket, just as the first eagle swept down from the clouds. The hobbit's heart leapt, and his mouth opened to cry "The Eagles! The Eagles! The Eagles are—"

Yet before he uttered his last, hopeful shout, a goblin mace met the back of his now-visible neck, and his spine cracked, and his neck was broken, and the body fell on the peak of Ravenhill without a sound as the battle roared on, the cries of eagles filling the valley. He would never see the road homeward again.

The ring had obeyed and betrayed its gentlest bearer, and the battle took no notice.

I - IN RECOVERY

Gandalf kept counting.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—"

In the huge arms of a tremendous black bear, number thirteen was borne, and indeed, the King under the Mountain was more fragile than Gandalf ever remembered him. His body was laid on a cot in a tent of healing in the dwarves' camp as the sun of the morning after the battle rose. Immediately, the wizard leapt to his feet, wincing as his left arm swung uselessly in its sling, but before a hand could be laid on Thorin Oakenshield, the King jolted awake, groping for his missing axe. "Where—" he began to splutter, a gallery of Khuzdul curses on the tip of his tongue.

"Lie still!" Gandalf commanded, the creases in his forehead deepening as he forced the King back down. Fíli, who had been at his unconscious brother's bedside, rushed to kneel at his uncle's. "The battle has been won, miraculously, and somehow your idiocy managed to survive, along with most of your companions."

"Bolg is dead, Thorin—" Fíli said weakly, overwhelmed, attempting to smile. "Beorn slew him, and Dáin saved Kíli and I after we tried to rescue you—"

"Do not accuse me of idiocy, Gandalf," Thorin managed to huff, breathing very heavily as Óin, accompanied by two young dwarves of the Iron Hills bedecked with bandages and ointment, hastened from the other side of the long tent. Here the Company laid, some members more grievously wounded than others. Blinking as his eyes grew adjusted to the grey light of morning, the King managed to get a better sense of his surroundings. This particular tent had been used in the old days, before Smaug had laid waste to the Mountain—it seemed that some of the more mundane storage units within Erebor had not been touched by the dragon, for this tent was as pristine (if not dusty) as in Thorin's memory. White canvas, with trimmings of pale blue, to mark it specifically as one for the wounded, and wide enough to house over twenty dwarf-sized cots, also from within the Mountain. It seemed, now, to hold the purpose of housing and healing all members of the Company alone, as the only unfamiliar faces in the tent were of Óin's assistants. Cool light filtered through the open flaps and into the tent, diffusing the pungent smell of dwarvish blood mixed with the smell of surgical spirits.

Sighing, the King allowed his head to fall back onto his pillow, and returned his focus to Gandalf's face, looming above him, like a disapproving moon. "I am no more of an idiot than my two sister-sons—"

"Who probably prevented from any further harm from coming to you, King under the Mountain," grumbled Gandalf before Fíli's face fell. It was sheer miracle that Thorin's impudence and idiotic pride had not been the death of him, and perhaps his living would cause more problems than his death would have—but it was not the place of a wizard to wish death upon those who still possess some good in them, no matter how buried it was under blinding stupidity. From Gandalf's last stand on the top of the hill, he had seen from afar two familiar blue hoods streaking towards their uncle as the king fell under Bolg's mace. He glanced at Fíli, then back at Thorin, and then shook his head. "Now shut your mouth, my Lord, before more blood leaks from it."

Sighing heavily, the wizard stepped back as Óin and his assistants removed Thorin's armor to tend to the King's wounds. Scanning the wounded dwarf in disapproval, Gandalf frowned, new wrinkles forming amongst old ones. Quite a few spears had pierced Thorin's flesh, an ugly red stain anointed his crown, and there was pus oozing from the arrow wound in his shoulder. But if the wizard knew anything of dwarves, he knew of their tremendous, staunch stubbornness, and if Thorin was stubborn enough to live, he would be stubborn enough to heal quite quickly.

"We're all fine, Thorin," Fíli insisted, as if he was trying to persuade himself as much as he was trying to persuade his uncle, one hand absentmindedly going to the bandage on his forehead. It hid a rather spectacular gash he had acquired in the defense of his uncle. His other hand began to tick off numbers—he clearly intended to tell Thorin the state of every member of the Company. "Well, not really fine, but we're all alive, so I suppose that counts. Kíli very nearly got a stab wound to the heart—"

"Kíli _what—_"

"—but another goblin struck his helm before the stroke fell, so it only hit his side; he was running a fever and is asleep now, but Óin says he'll be alright…"

"Been complaining about the gruel we've been trying to force down his stubborn prat of a throat—" muttered Óin distractedly as he applied ointment to a poultice and handed it to another healer to pat down upon Thorin's wounds. Thorin relaxed in his cot—his sister-sons had come out of this whole, after all. He had set out with the sinking knowledge that they would likely never see their mother again, but perhaps Dís could forgive a few battle scars.

"One, two, three..." counted Gandalf again from the corner. Thorin glanced at the wizard apprehensively, and then made a very unkingly noise as a healer applied copious amounts of surgical spirit to the gash in his chest.

"No one could hurt Bombur, he's too fat—" Fíli went on, undeterred and somewhat frantic. "Balin is on the cot over there; he was stuck with a poison arrow, but Óin got the poison out before it festered—I think the old warrior's asleep—"

"I am not asleep, Master Fíli," came Balin's patient but very weary voice from his cot. "I am merely resting in between my shifts of tending to the others—my apologies, Thorin."

"S-Sorry, Balin... Dwalin has a new war trophy, a very ugly wound around the eye, but I suppose he's pleased about that. Gloin's special pocket frames were cracked, but an arrow ricocheted off of them so they probably saved his life. Nori nearly got his hand chopped off by a poisoned blade, but he just got a nasty gash. He's just complaining that he won't be able to nick anything with his right hand for a while. Bofur broke a leg and lost three toes, somehow, and a lot of blood—but he's just glad it wasn't a finger, he can still play clarinet—Bifur went berserk during the battle, did you see him?"

"I—" Before Thorin had a chance to respond in between intervals of the healers poking at his gashes, Fíli went on, barely stopping to take a breath.

"No? Well, he was very fearsome, and has a maul from a warg to prove it—Ori ended up the worst out of most of us—he broke _all _his ribs, I think one of the larger orcs trampled him, and got an arrow to his leg to boot—Dori's going mad over it—he's far tougher than he looks, but I don't believe he'll be able to do much for a few months, aside from writing and drawing—but he won't be too upset over that—see, everyone is—"

"Fine," grunted Thorin, wincing as he attempted to swat away one of the healers and push himself upright. (He had faced orcs equipped with blades and halberds, and now he must battle healers armed with rosewood and ointment.) "Take a deep breath, Fíli—your nerves are probably still buzzing. That was your first battle, after all—" He stretched out one arm gingerly to pat Fíli's shoulder as the young dwarf-prince reddened and shrank in embarrassment.

"I just wanted you to know that we're—"

"I _understand_, Fíli—" Indeed, as Thorin strained his neck to scan the length of the tent, there did not seem to be anyone absent. He could spot Kíli's curled-up form a few cots away, Dorí fussing over preparations of warm draughts for his brothers. The tent was abuzz with familiar voices, some more hushed than others. It seemed that the Company had escaped from the battle intact, somehow. But the wizard had said _most _of his companions, and unless Gandalf's eyes were growing dim— "Gandalf! You said 'most'—who is missing?"

The wizard was not paying attention to the talk between the royals—he had wandered to the opening of the tent, eyes fixed upon the desolation of the battlefield, searching for a worn burgundy travel coat, or the distinctive shine of mithril mail, or the glow of Sting, or a mop of curly brown hair. A footfall of the hobbit Gandalf had played babysitter to for the past adventure—a telltale sign of their infamous burglar.

He would find one, in time. And it would not soothe his worries.

"Where in _Arda_ is our lucky number?"

§-§

Kíli awoke at a howl that pierced the grey of the afternoon. It froze the air, and then shattered it, leaving splinters in the ears of all, and it was filled with anguish and beastly fury. Sitting bolt upright, the young Prince grasped wildly for an arrow, to find that instead of a quiver, he leaned upon a pillow, and instead of his bow, he had grasped a flask of water and had emptied it on his own bandages. His vision still blurry, he searched for the visage of his brother, for the landscape of the battle he had fallen in. "What is—who—where—"

But he was ignored, and the entirety of the dwarvish camp was peering from the flaps of their tents, out to the source of the dreadful cry, out to the lolloping shape of a great black bear, silhouette stark against the grey of the sky. As it neared, many more heads emerged from their tents. Many more eyes fixed on what it held in its paws. Of the many, Thorin Oakenshield rose very slowly, very gingerly from his cot, one arm around his abdomen, and parted the canvas of the tent to see Gandalf. And Gandalf was paler than Thorin ever remembered him.

The wizard hurried out to meet the shape of the bear. It seemed to be cradling something tiny and fragile in its huge arms—something tiny and fragile, bearing an elvish blade—

A muffled cry arose from outside the tent, and Fíli made his way to his brother's side, face white and mouth quivering.

"Kíli, stay inside—"

"What—what was that?" Kíli whispered feverishly, grasping his brother's arm. Fíli looked over his shoulder, then took his brother's hand, shaking his head.

"Stay inside and look away."

§-§

"Beorn," the wizard had murmured, and the huge man standing with crossed arms at the other side of the tent had stridden over to him. Though the battle had ended, the skin-changer remained at the side of the mountain, at least until he could see every last goblin killed and its corpse desecrated, or at least put to good use. Beorn had been watching the movements over the grey of the battlefield, standing guard over the foolish dwarves he had befriended months before.

"How's His Majesty?" Beorn had said, his usual growl hushed as he bent slightly to be face-to-face with the wizard.

"Somehow alive," Gandalf had muttered, eyes never wavering from the battlefield. "But that is not who I'm worried for. Do you remember the scent of our burglar?"

"Of course. Smells almost exactly like a fat rabbit." Beorn had glanced inside the tent, and then stood up to peer over the tents around the campsite, where many a dwarf sat licking wounds. "Has he still not popped up, then?"

"I'm afraid not, and I have a grave feeling in my bones that—" No, he would not consider that option. That option is _impossible_. "Well—would you sniff him out for me? His smell should be quite distinctive amongst the rancor of goblins, and he was last heard atop Ravenhill with the Elvenking and me. He bears a ring of invisibility—yes, that is why he has not been found yet. He should be quite alright."

Beorn had stretched to his fullest height, and towered over the grey wizard. "I am not a bloodhound, Gandalf, but I will find him." And then he was a bear, hulking and dark and twenty feet tall, and he had moved like night on a winter's eve, quickly weaving through the mounds of corpses.

He had found the hobbit under one, and he had let out a roar.

§-§

At the foot of the Lonely Mountain, Beorn cradled the corpse of Bilbo Baggins with surprising gentleness, as if the hobbit was no more than a sleeping infant. With utmost care, the hobbit's body was laid in Gandalf's free arm, and the wizard's throat tightened as he lowered him softly to the ground, cupping the back of his head as it rolled back at a horrible angle. His hand came away bloody and entangled in hair.

A collective cry of the hobbit's name came from the opening of the tent as most of the conscious members of the Company ran to Gandalf, leaning haphazardly on each other's shoulders, loping heedless of their wounds. There were many cries of "Bilbo's back!" or "Someone fetch water, quick!", but the most pervasive question was echoed amongst the battle-worn dwarves: "Why isn't he moving?"

Breaking free of Fíli's arms, Kíli lunged to Gandalf's side, his brother close behind. Balin arrived first, staggering slightly from his still-aching arrow wound. "Stay back, lads! Don't crowd them!" he cried hoarsely, above their frantic murmurings.

They did not need Balin's warning. And as soon as they saw the hobbit's form, curled up like a dead rabbit, neck snapped and spine hunched, they froze, half in shock and half in disgust. They had all seen bodies before, but the hobbit's spine must have been frailer than dwarvish bones, and his blood even redder.

Thorin came last, and he only caught sight of the hobbit limp in Gandalf's arms before he stumbled back and caught himself upon the tent canvas.

Tremulously, the wizard pushed back the curly hair caught in the blood dried upon the hobbit's forehead, and before anyone else could utter a word, Gandalf uttered something ancient and desperate and unintelligible, and it was surely a spell. The Company held their breath, and the wizard's fingers glowed gold, yet there was no change in the body. Still Bilbo hung, like a broken doll, in the one good arm of the wizard, eyes glazed and open and staring intently up at the sky, cracked lips caught somewhere in a triumphant shout. With a lurch in his stomach, Gandalf thought of how easily death must have had come to the hobbit—snapping his neck must have been as easy as snapping a match in two—

With a shudder, he looked up at the circle of horrified dwarves around him. "What are you all standing there for, fools?!" he barked suddenly, and they all shivered. "Fetch a stretcher, one of you useless dwarves—fetch it quick!"

They parted like a sea of frightened animals.

Bilbo was laid atop a stretcher far too large for him, and Beorn, a man once more, carried the stretcher inside a green-canvassed tent for Bilbo alone, erected at Gandalf's bidding. Outside stood the Company, and they stood still, faces petrified and eyes wide, and they could not believe, somehow, that the hobbit they had mocked for his weakness so long ago was really truly dead. They could not weep, not until Balin sank to his knees, his hands knotting in his beard. The rest of the Company stared at him, and then their eyes were moist.

Inside Bilbo's tent, Beorn's face was set with fury—he never took the deaths of defenseless creatures well—and yet Gandalf only looked older and a great deal hollower as he arranged Bilbo's limbs, folding his scarf to prop up the hobbit's head. He had refused help from Óin or the other healers. He alone would touch the corpse—he alone had brought the hobbit on the quest, and he would be alone in cleaning the body.

Yet he was not alone in his thoughts.

_This is wrong. This was not meant to happen. This should not be._


	2. In Mourning

A somewhat short, early update with the cast still in grieving. Again, if anyone would like to beta some of the upcoming chapters for me, or just to have previews of the story ahead, message me on my tumblr, anonymously or not! ( .vu) I'll be discussing updates to this fanfic here: .vu/tagged/wtlre

Please enjoy, and do leave a review if you can! They make my heart feel warm and fuzzy!

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II - IN MOURNING

The Company had fallen back into their tent, their faces white and disbelieving. They sat with bent backs upon the cots of their sleeping fellows, their brimming eyes glazed-over and lowered to the ground, unwilling to look up to find an absence in their presence. The King, meanwhile, sat straight-backed on his cot, staring straight ahead at dusky tent canvas. They did not know what he was or was not seeing.

In Bilbo's tent, Gandalf stood, shoulders slumped, over the body, wiping blood from the hobbit's twisted neck. Beorn stood at the mouth of the tent, watching the wizard silently as a whisper sped around the camp outside that the King's burglar was dead.

The skin-changer shook his head, his jaw set. "Found him under a large one with a mace—that's why we couldn't spot him," Beorn grunted after a long while, his voice straining to conceal an urge to return to his bear form and hunt more goblins. "Looks to be the one who killed him, from behind. It was felled by an elvish arrow—too late, I think."

"He should have been safe," Gandalf whispered, voice dry and cracked, as he wiped the final stain of dried blood away from the hobbit's jaw. "His ring—I don't understand—this could not have been _meant_ to happen—throughout the whole journey, down that long road, through the mountains and the forests, I always knew he would worm his way out—_I don't understand_—"

The approaching footsteps of dwarves halted his train of thought, and he turned to see Fíli and Balin at the mouth of the tent, the older very tired and leaning heavily upon the younger, and the younger very pale and shaking as he was leaned upon. "Can we—" Fíli began hesitantly, but Gandalf sighed and motioned them in, Beorn bowing as he exited the tent (as it was too small for two more occupants, and he was too large to stay).

At the sight of the body, the younger of the two dwarves flinched, the corners of his mouth quivering in repulsion, but Balin squeezed his shoulder and nodded. Nodding back, Fíli looked away from the body, took a sharp breath, and faced Gandalf. "On—on the behalf of the King under the Mountain," he began in his best princely voice, shaking slightly, "we relinquish—we waive the former words of exile towards Bilbo Baggins, companion of Thorin Oakenshield, and—and bestow the chiefest and greatest honors of the Kingdom of the Lonely Mountain on him, and request that he be buried in the dwarvish crypts beneath the mountain." As he finished, Fíli took another deep breath, and Balin clapped him gravely on the back, nodding in approval.

"And does the King under the Mountain know of this?" Gandalf said, more sharply than he meant to be. He had a grave suspicion that "on the behalf of King under the Mountain" did not mean "Thorin said." At the shame with which Fíli looked away, Gandalf's suspicion was confirmed. Biting his lip, the wizard shook his head, and looked back at the little body stretched out in the shade of the afternoon. "Never mind that, Fíli—you are rightful Prince, so your word holds true. Your relinquishment will be honored, but I am not sure of how the King will respond to you speaking on his behalf." Relief washing over Fíli's pale face, he bowed shakily to Gandalf and excused himself, likely so he would not have to stare at the dead hobbit any longer.

Gingerly, Balin leaned upon a pole of the tent as Fíli pulled away. With a very deep, very knowing sigh, he turned to Bilbo's still form. "It was Kíli's idea, but he was weeping and did not want to present it to you while in such a state," he said softly, shaking his head as he stared at the hobbit's little form. "Fíli was more hesitant, but neither of them wished to consult with Thorin before coming to you."

"And how is the King taking this knowledge?" murmured Gandalf, straightening the hobbit's clothes. They were worn and stained with the grit of battle, but he doubted Bilbo would have liked to be buried in rainments recovered from the dragon's hoard that would have been given to him if Gandalf had requested for funeral clothes.

"He's brooding in his cot at the moment, I believe… he has yet to speak to anyone of Mr Baggins' death, or of repentance," Balin said heavily, closing his eyes. "I hope—I think he is very ashamed, and shame never went well with his pride, did it? Look where it has brought us now—to the battlefield. As it will always bring us. As it always has."

"This is not right," Gandalf muttered softly again, looking upon the corpse of the hobbit he had been so fond of. "I would have never—I _cannot_ believe it—"

"Neither can I," Balin whispered. "As poorly as we all thought of Mr Baggins in the beginning, his death, somehow, I just can't—" His voice trailed off as the light of a shrouded sun filtered through the flaps of the tent, catching in the hobbit's curly hair. Looking down at the hobbit's empty hand, he murmured, "What of his ring, Gandalf? Where is it?"

"In his waistcoat pocket—he was not wearing it when Beorn found him," said Gandalf, almost absentmindedly. "And _that_ is what I cannot understand—as brave as our Baggins proved himself to be, there was no logical reason to take it off in the midst of the battle, unless it was to trade it for safety, of course... No, this cannot be right. I do not believe it, nor do I accept it."

The two stood in silence for a long while, Balin hoping all the while that the King would appear at the entrance to the tent to grieve over the hobbit he very nearly threw from the gates of Erebor. The King did not come. The road between his shame and his repentance was long.

"I must speak with the Lady of Lórien," Gandalf said suddenly, breaking the silence. "I have a grave feeling—a very grave feeling that something is awry, and that a chess piece has been lost, and perhaps Lady Galadriel's sight could shed light for me. But I cannot leave here—I do not know how much the bloodshed swayed Thorin into being more generous—and more logical—in meetings with the Elvenking and Bard, and if I do not wish for Bilbo's efforts to have been in vain, and for a battle between _three_ armies instead of five—"

"I don't know why you must leave," Balin said as he moved to the body's side, to mourn for their burglar, "but if you must, know that we will do our best with Thorin, and I have more trust in Thorin than you do, perhaps, Mr Gandalf."

Sighing, Gandalf stepped out of the tent into the pale sunlight, gazing down at the many bodies of dwarves and men that still must be interred, and on the fewer corpses of elves that would be carried back to the depths of the woods. "I shall stay until Bilbo is buried, until the sky clears again."

Back in the Company's tent, Ori awoke to silence. Attempting to pull himself upright from under a heap of blankets, he murmured feebly, "Has Bilbo been found yet?"

No one answered, and the King hid his face.

§-§

Though the ages wash over wizards like tides over sand, and do not change them, it seemed a very long time ago when Gandalf had been picnicking atop the Hill with Belladonna Baggins (née Took), her husband, and her only son. They sat upon a sunny lawn, dandelions tickling at them through their clothes, and the light filtered through the oak leaves above.

It was the first time Gandalf had visited the Shire since he attended Belladonna's (rather lavish) wedding some years ago, in which he had let loose a great many firecrackers to mark the union of the indisputably respectable Bagginses and the fabulously wealthy Tooks. From what Gandalf remembered, the match was quite agreeable to the Old Took (who quite liked the idea of Bella having the kind of husband that would prevent her from being eaten by trolls on her next excursion into the wild), but not quite as agreeable to Bungo's mother, who had declared Bungo's beloved far too flighty for a proper bride. (Indeed, Belladonna had evaded Bungo's feelings for quite a few years, both because she was unsure of her own and because she did not quite like the idea of having a husband get in the way of her and her adventures—when the former was sorted out, the latter became little more than an inconvenience.) It was Belladonna's rather impressive dowry that eventually sweetened the deal, and Bungo and Bella were wed under glittering fireworks above Hobbiton. And not long afterwards, Bilbo was born. Bungo Baggins, a shivery sort of nervous fellow who both feared and adored his wife, had exactly Bilbo's countenance, but the young hobbit's hair was as fair as his mother's, and his rambunctious "adventurer's" spirit certainly came from Belladonna as well.

"So," chortled Gandalf, in between puffs of pipeweed, "am I to understand that your adventuring days are over, my dear Belladonna?"

Belladonna laughed and pulled her son into her arms, running fingers through curly hair as her husband smiled nervously and buttered more buns. "Oh, I think I have enough adventuring to do here at home, with such mischievous spawn, Gandalf—he'll be fighting monsters soon enough!" With that, Bilbo wriggled out of his mother's grasp, and with excitable giggles, attempted to catch the smoke rings Gandalf made. He was far too little to reach them, but it was a delightful sight—the tiny hobbit child leaping for the smoke rings under the warmth of the Shire sun from under the branches of the beech tree they were picnicking under, the grass underfoot as green as it ever was. The checkered picnic blanket had become strewn with crumbs dropped from laughing mouths. The sky was blue and open, and the road weaving around the hills of the Shire stretched out east, beckoning to adventurers, unending.

"Perhaps Bilbo will be like me, and will learn that road in time," Belladonna mused, leaning playfully on Bungo as the three watched Bilbo attempt and fail, to catch a ring in midair.

"Oh, I hope not—" Bungo said, somewhat timidly. "He is a Baggins, after all, even though he seems takes after you, Bella..."

"Well, perhaps he won't, or perhaps he will," Gandalf said lazily, giving the child another puff to chase. "Perhaps that road will be necessary for him, one day."

The one time Bilbo had journeyed on that eastern road, he never returned.

§-§

The dwarves took turns in visitation of the body of their friend, and Gandalf preferred not to watch their comings and goings. He busied himself with the ordering of the camp and the cleanup and politics of the battle's aftermath, in an attempt to push the image of little Bilbo from his mind. There was much to fuss over—accounting for those slain, treating those wounded, arranging meetings for the leaders of the three victors. Even after all corpses elvish, mannish, or dwarvish were recovered, there was still the matter of identifying them, burying the men and dwarves, sending the elven corpses back to the woodland, and most foul of all, clearing all the corpses of goblins and wargs that littered the desolation grotesquely. Beorn aided in the gathering of the goblin corpses, collecting them in great heaps with ease as the Lake-men and the dwarves of the Iron Hills struggled to pull them in one by one.

"We must burn them, before the corpses rot and the Lonely Mountain smells of dead goblins as well as of dragon and more foul things come to feast on the carrion," muttered Beorn, to the agreement of Gandalf, Bard, and the Elvenking. But the dwarves protested—they must ensure that every dwarvish body has been moved away from the battlefield before the fires are lit, else they commit sacrilege. To the annoyance of the Elvenking and the understanding of Bard, it took three days for the huge expanse of the battlefield to be cleared for the burning of the goblin bodies. For the sake of ensuring that the orcs and goblins that had fled the battlefield would not return to strike on the allied encampment, the Elvenking organized a company of elves to drive the remainder of the orcs back to the mountains. These elves were accompanied by a still-bloodthirsty Beorn, and the encampments were forced to go without his help in clearing the battlefield. All the while, many tombs were hewed out deep under the mountain for the felled dwarves, and many graves for the men were dug at the mountain's foot, so a fair graveyard was created under the mountain's shadow. The fellows of the dead wept and grieved, but the world of the mortals keep turning, in the midst of a chorus of laments.

And as the world outside moved on, the Company of the King under the Mountain kept mourning. Some, namely Kíli and Ori, refused to see Bilbo's body, and wept out of tenderness away from the tent where he lay. Still, a very lovely illustration in Ori's ink was found, dedicated to the late hobbit, at the side of his cot, and Fíli's visits were always on his brother's behalf as well as his own. Some, like Dwalin and Gloin, visited the body surreptitiously, in shame of their King's last words to their former burglar. Some said their final words or thanks to Bilbo in their visitations. From Bombur, it was a tearful thanks for enjoying his cooking over the course of their journey, as well as a sorrowful apology for eating so much of Bilbo's larder on that first unexpected party. From Bifur, it was only a few words in Khuzdul that the hobbit would have never understood, but they certainly would have conveyed something very heartfelt.

As the funeral approached and the mounds of bodies at the foot of the Lonely Mountain gradually vanished, the remaining members of the Company did their best to busy themselves around the camp. Balin had scheduled the hobbit's funeral as soon as the victors of the battle were finished in the clearing of the battlefield, which would be within a couple of days, and to the surprise of the dwarves (and the expectations of Gandalf), both Bard and the Elvenking insisted upon their attendance. As humble as Bilbo Baggins was, he had prevented a battle for the treasure under the Mountain. Even though it had lost him the goodwill of the King, it earned him the greatest respect from the elves and the Lake-men. A lament was composed, chiefly by Bofur, who insisted that the members of the Company well enough to perform shall play their instruments at the hobbit's funeral. It was given the rather grand title of "the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins," arranged with five of the Company's strongest voices and accompanied by flute, clarinet, viol, and fiddle. (Bofur had also written a part for Thorin's harp, in the hopeful chance that the King would attend the ceremony.)

When it came to the body itself, Óin fussed very much over it and its cleaning and embalmment, insisting that Gandalf had not done a proper job. Traditional dwarvish embalmment consisted of a great many preserving potions and post-mortem mixtures, not to mention the funerary fragrances and myrrh taken from the Mountain's stores. "I'd been preparing them anyway," Óin had said, "as I sort of expected more of us to die." But no, the littlest member of their Company would be the first of them to be buried. Burial arrangements were further complicated when Nori and Gloin disappeared into the Mountain one morning and emerged that afternoon, arms full of royal regalia (likely manufactured for young dwarf princes or elvish children) they deemed to be hobbit-sized, to dress the body in its long sleep. Such garments included a waistcoat of velvet and embroidered with thread spun of solid gold, a shroud fit for an elf-lord and beaded with rubies, and a full coat of battle-ready armor. Gandalf sternly objected to dressing the hobbit in such finery, knowing that in life, Bilbo would have certainly preferred to be dressed as himself at his burial, rather than to be dressed as some heroic noble. Thus his garments were washed and darned with care (they had become rather raggedy since the commencement of their venture). Fallen brass buttons were replaced with new golden ones, the fabric scented with dwarvish incense taken from the hoard. The only piece of finery the body was dressed in was the lovely mithril mail that had been bestowed upon the hobbit before the battle.

They then began preparing the hobbit's tomb—deep under the mountain with other fallen dwarvish warriors, in his own sealed-off crypt, specially designed, with the aid of Ori's artistic eye, as similar to a small hobbit hole as possible—its door was to be as green as Bag End's, far away to the West. The design of the tomb itself was also disputed upon (Gandalf insisted that this fuss was unnecessary and Bilbo really wouldn't have minded a simple wooden coffin; Dori was pushing for the hewing of a recumbent effigy). It was finally decided to have the sarcophagus carved without flourish, but to have an intricately-etched circular glass window, above the hobbit's sleeping face, installed upon the lid of the tomb. Noting that Bilbo would have certainly been embarrassed by the attention his corpse was being paid, Gandalf found himself watching the installment of a round green door with a golden knob in its center in the depths of the Lonely Mountain, all unknown to its King. He had still not paid respects to the body.


	3. In Reparation

A few notes on this week's chapter! It's not as long as the next couple of chapters will be, not by a long shot, but I'm trying to get in the habit of writinga new chapter every Saturday. This is a bit of an early submission, but I wanted to get it out to you as fast as possible! (Hopefully!) Still, I'm an extremely busy student and I'm not the kind of person who would exchange quality for quantity, so please forgive me if I don't always stick to aschedule!

Trigger warning-this chapter includes descriptions of both death and vomiting. The death one isn't new, but the vomiting one is.

Thank you for reading, and enjoy! I still need a beta reader, so feel free to message me on tumblr ( .vu) or to leave a comment. If you'd like, leave a review! I'm really humbled by all your wonderful comments.

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III - IN REPARATION

The King under the Mountain, properly up and about no more than two days after the battle, despite the many wounds he had incurred (his bandages still needed changing three times per day, but the stubbornness of dwarf-lords cannot be matched), met with Thranduil Elvenking, accompanied by his son, Bard and two other grim-looking Lake-men, and Dáin's representatives from the Iron Hills, in a newly-erected pavilion not far from the gates of Erebor. Dáin himself was still bedridden, and Thorin secretly rued the presence of his representatives, who were not his kin, and would be more hesitant to comply with him. Thorin himself was accompanied by Balin, a more capable politician, perhaps, than he, and also was joined by Fíli and Kíli, who were suddenly forced upon the titles of "Princes under the Mountain." Kíli did not take the new position of authority as well as Fíli, who resembled his mother Dís in terms of charisma. Gloin, self-appointed treasurer, joined Thorin's attendants, if only to scowl at those he believed unworthy of the treasure of the dwarves. Gandalf, as well, attended these meetings, wary of the King's ability to parley, even after the battle. And his worries were not unjustified, for he was not well pleased by Thorin's ability at politics.

"I am Thorin, son of Thráin, rightful King under the Mountain and king of the treasure we have retaken as well—do not mistake me," he said, his voice unmistakably menacing under all its forced politeness and loquaciousness. "The treasure of the Lonely Mountain has always and only been the treasure of dwarves, and the death of the worm that so wrongly hath our people slain and driven away from their homeland does not constitute as a right to take more than one-hundredth of the treasure from us, on pledge that the Arkenstone will be returned at this exchange."

From the opposite end of the table, Gandalf's eyes flashed dangerously. Thorin did not seem to acknowledge him, yet ever so slightly, the King's jaw tightened. Bard, who managed to survive the battle with only an arrow to the shoulder, nevertheless looked far wearier and even more grim than the usual. Still, his lips tightened and he shook his head. "My Lord, as much as I respect the dwarvish claim to most of the Mountain's gold, we only _just_ fought side-by-side against a greater foe, and my slaying of Smaug resulted in a desolation of my land and my people. If anything, I hope you can understand that, and I hope you can see that one-hundredth of the treasure will not be nearly enough to aid my people. For this, I cannot exchange the Arkenstone."

"I am prepared to don my armor and weapons to take it forcibly, if I must, then, Bard of the line of Girion," Thorin said, his voice dangerously low. Balin and Fíli shifted uncomfortably in their seats, Kíli looking stricken_. I agree with Bilbo_, thought Gandalf heavily—_bother and confusticate these dwarves_!

"And yet," the Elvenking chimed in, his eyes moving from Bard's to Thorin's, "I doubt that there can be any more exchange of blows between the parties; all sides suffered heavy losses, so unless the next battle be called 'Battle of the Remaining Able-Bodied Soldiers,' there can be no more bloodshed."

And so, like this, the argument went on, around the table of the councilors, voices slowly heightening throughout the course of the evening, as the sky faded from smoky orange to hazy blue, and no stars peeked through the cold winter fog.

"The people of Laketown must be given their dues—"

"On the behalf of Dáin of the Iron Hills, we cannot give full aid in the state of our soldiers—"

"Perhaps a higher sum for the people of Laketown, to cover their—"

"The dwarves will not bow to the pleas of thieves and elves—"

"I will not let the Arkenstone rest in the hands of _the enemy_—"

"The _enemy_?!" Gandalf bellowed suddenly, and all heads turned to the grey wizard, who stood suddenly taller and darker than the rest seen him before, the top of his hat touching the pavilion ceiling. "There is no enemy but yourselves in this room—" Pausing to take a breath, he seemed to recede back to his normal height, the rest of the room still frozen in stupor. "Perhaps—the sun is low, and I believe it best that for proper council, our members must be better-rested from their wounds. I adjourn the meeting, and perhaps—precisely at eight o' clock, in three days time, we shall meet once more."

In awkward silence, the rest of the room seemed to silently comply, and each slowly stood up to leave—none bowing politely except for the Elvenking's son, who had not said a word throughout the argument. As Thorin stood up to return to the camp, and perhaps to have his bandages changed once more, Gandalf took his shoulder. "A word, King under the Mountain?" he said, and before Thorin could reply, Gandalf swept out. Balin looked up at his King, sighed, and followed suit, motioning for Fíli and Kíli to join him, neither of whom looked at their uncle as they left.

Once Thorin left the pavilion, he found Gandalf standing at its entrance, waiting for him, it seemed. "Come along," the wizard said shortly, and they made their way down the path to the camp. Overhead, a thick blanket of mist stretched across the sky, a pale moon just shining through in gaps in the fog. "I would have hoped," Gandalf began, sounding very tired, "that the great bloodshed that could have been prevented, if your swords had not been drawn towards each other when the goblins came, would have given you a warning of what your pride may have lead you to."

Entering the camp, Thorin exhaled, his brow set. "When there is a duty for revenge on your back for a hundred years, Gandalf, you will understand that pride is, perhaps, the only grace you were left with. With the threat of the goblin invasions before the battle, yes, strange times may have called for strange bedfellows—but now we must return to our sides, and I must return to the throne that I have reclaimed after its siege and the slaughter of my people, and to my pride. And now that pride has been so _threatened_, even after joining forces with the ene—with the opposition against another foe, it can only be protected. And yes, Gandalf, even after the strife, I still do not wish to see the Arkenstone in false hands, but I will _not_ have my people grovel, even at the feet of someone as noble as Bard."

"Grovel?" Gandalf scoffed, as they passed the Company's tent, from which Fíli peered out for a split-second at the passing wizard and King. Thorin thought he could catch shame in the new prince's eyes, but he ignored it. "Is giving a more reasonable sum of your vast trove 'groveling,' my Lord? Is reasonable diplomacy 'groveling'? If so, I've seen a fair amount of groveling in my day, and on fairer forums than on the edge of a desolated battlefield. There must be peace, Thorin, after so much—"

"There cannot be _peace_ if there is not _trust_, and the withholding of the Arkenstone only proves the opposite—"

"Then all of poor Bilbo's efforts were in vain, and he _died_ in vain, away from safety and comfort in knowing that he brought peace!" Gandalf hissed, and he stopped in front of a green tent—the very tent where the burglar's body lay. "You still have not paid respects to our hobbit, Thorin, and he died in exile, not to mention in your self-professed hate."

Thorin paled, and for once, he did not speak. He merely let out a huff and turned away, staring fixedly at the gates of the Mountain. _Shame and dwarvish pride never did mix well, did they_, Gandalf thought exhaustedly. "I know you would have wished to make amends, Thorin," he said softly, his voice very tired once more. "But now it is too late, and the only thing you can do for Bilbo's memory is to release your fervor for gold, and bring the sort of peace he craved."

"He _betrayed_ us—"

"No, Thorin," said Gandalf gravely, "he wished for tranquility, and his hobbit-sense had the good fortune to take the Arkenstone before you set your hands on it. He did not care for treasure, or he would not have given up the Arkenstone. He did not care for pride, either, as you saw when you forced him to leave your Company, slinking and humbled, on pain of death at your hands. He had saved you and the Company more than once, and you forget that too easily. He tried to _save your hide_ and the respective hides of your dwarvish companions again with the Arkenstone, but you could not see that, and you nearly threw him from the turret walls. Do you understand why your heirs cannot look you in the eye? Why none of them told you of Bilbo's funeral? Which, by the way, I certainly hope you attend."

If Gandalf still retained his charisma, then he hoped that this could, with some sort of divine luck bestowed by a sympathetic Aulë on his foolish dwarvish creation, shame the dwarf-lord enough to shame him into repentance. But he could not rely on luck and only the hope of a positive outcome; if he knew Thorin and his unquenchable quest to regain and retain his pride, then he must prepare for the worst, as well. If anything, there must be something he could do about the Arkenstone—

Thorin said no more, and his eyes had not wavered from the sight of the Mountain, even if they did seem to glisten slightly in the moonlight. Sighing again, Gandalf put his face in his wrinkled palm and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked back ruefully at the sight of the dwarf-lord, battered yet still unbroken. "I must bid you goodnight, your majesty—but if you do manage to come to your senses and attend Bilbo's funeral, then be warned—I overheard Bofur hoping aloud to the rest of the Company that you'd provide them with a harp solo during Bilbo's lament." And the wizard swept away, disappearing around another tent, into the shadow of the Mountain, growing over the camp.

Retreating slowly to his own tent, stationed beside the long tent of healing, Thorin sat heavily atop his cot, in the dark and the shade of the navy-black night. He would not call in a healer to change his bandages; not tonight. It was a deathly sort of pride that kept him from weeping, as his companions did, for the death of the hobbit. It was curious, perhaps, that the hobbit alone had died amongst the fourteen that had journeyed from Ered Luin, from the hills of the Shire, from kindly west to cold east. It had been a long road on which the fourteen had journeyed together, but now it shall end, and that deathly sort of pride was a barricade. It did not allow him to acknowledge his shame.

_Perhaps it is for the best_, the King thought, as he slung off his vestures and laid his head to rest, staring unseeingly at the dark of his tent ceiling. Outside, he heard the crackle of fires and dwarvish voices speaking of the rebuilding of the Lonely Mountain. Of how riches that would travel down the river once more, and how the halls of Erebor would shine with silver and gold, and how the Arkenstone, once recovered from the hands of thieves and traitors, would be set in the throne of the King, shining through his crown for a thousand years—

He did not want to listen, and his eyes closed, and the skies had filled with smoke.

§-§

"He's trying to turn us _against_ King Thorin!" growled Gloin, from inside the tent of the Company. The red-bearded dwarf stood as tall and as regally as he could, but Gandalf could only stare down at him in sardonic dismay.

"I merely asked, Master Gloin, for you all to keep an eye on Thorin for me and perhaps aid him in considering some sort of compromise," the wizard said dully, leaning on his staff in the candlelight of the long tent. The waking dwarves were staring at him, most wearing similarly torn expressions, yet a certain few were silent yet very much on Gandalf's side. "Do we not all agree that the current situation—trapped twixt the bows and spears of elves and the arrows and anger of Lake-men—calls for a little gracious _concession_ on either side? Concessions that the King doesn't seem keen on granting?"

Dwalin, who had been making a very grim face from under his facial bandages, stood up by Gloin. "In storm and in fair weather, Thorin is our King, and I'll be _melted down by Mahal _before I go turncoat on him—"

"Now, now, brother," came the long-suffering voice of a very tired Balin, "let's not be hasty in this."

"You shan't be going _turncoat_—" interjected Fíli suddenly, and Balin was only the first to turn his head towards Fíli's cot. The gaze of the whole tent fell upon him, and the Crown Prince shrank uncharacteristically. "Er—I mean, Mr Gandalf's doing this in the King's best interest—aren't you, Mr Gandalf? He doesn't want any of us to kill each other over a disagreement, not after—not now, I mean, and if Thorin—if the King doesn't see that, I don't see what's wrong with trying to show him, aye?"

"Aye!" cried Kíli from the cot to Fíli's right, staring around the tent, having obviously thought that there would be more resounding "ayes" from the others. His enthusiasm faded when he realized that the others did not join in.

The Company, once raucous and exuberant, was now hesitatingly somber, their wills divisive and their loyalties in question. Gandalf gazed round the tent and sighed wearily—no, he hadn't quite wanted a government to be reinstated by the band of fools that had begun the journey, but at least that band of fools would have been better than a half-hearted, wavering group of battle-worn dwarves. _Confound that Thorin Oakenshield!_, he thought tiredly, not for the first or last time that day. When Thorin had sent Bilbo away, the loyalty of the Company was shaken, but now that his post-battle kingly resolutions threatened to put what had been won in danger—

_At least_, Gandalf thought, his former hopes to establish safety in the East blighted and his current faith in the wisdom of dwarves failing, _they still have one common interest, or rather, one common thing to mourn. _At least he still knew that all twelve dwarvish companions of Thorin Oakenshield would be attending Bilbo's funeral. The King himself, perhaps not, but at least his companions would be in mourning.

"Confound you all," the wizard said suddenly, and his voice was not yet resigned, but it was very drained indeed. The gaze of the Company fell on him. "Let us have no arguments over where your loyalties lie before poor Bilbo is laid in the grave—I should have made my request after he had been laid to rest, out of respect—"

"If Bilbo hadn't betrayed us, we'd have beaten those damned thieves and scoundrels back and we'd have been done with it," said Dwalin lowly, but a cry of outrage arose from half of the dwarves, with numerous hisses of "he isn't even in the earth yet!"

Balin gave the back of his brother's head a swat. "We'll have none of that sort of talk, lads," he said firmly, crossing his arms. "Whether or not you thought Master Baggins, bless his soul, betrayed this Company, speak not poorly of the dead, else you'll wake in your own deathbed!" (Here he had recited one of the more famous old dwarf-wives tales, one quoted a great deal by Dís herself when she found her supper-guests getting too fresh in their gossip.)

"There was no betrayal in Bilbo's actions, Master Dwalin," said Gandalf heavily, closing his eyes. "In fact, if he had not done what he had done, you would have been too busy squabbling with the elves and the Lake-men to see that the orcs were already upon you, and you would have all died with surprise etched onto your foolish faces."

There was a silence, and Dwalin's lips tightened, and the Company stared at their feet.

"Is that why you chose him in the first place?" murmured Kíli pensively from his cot, breaking the silence. He looked up to the wizard curiously. "Because you thought he might've been able to save us like that?"

Gandalf could have almost chuckled. _Not quite, but something like that._ "Hobbit-sense is something I've found rather indispensable in all my years—and I'd say that it trumps dwarvish sensibilities in many aspects, indeed."

The remaining members of the Company exchanged glances, and they could have almost chuckled, too, if only Bilbo had been there to laugh with them.

§-§

Thorin awoke twice from his dreams that night.

The first time he awoke, he found snatches of strange conversation floating nebulously in his drowsy mind, like smoke—already gone at your second glance.

_Farewell, good thief—_

Rolling up hazily from his cot, the King propped himself up on one arm and winced at the feeling of the irritated skin under his bandages chafing. He rolled his neck, blinked twice, and heard the crack of his own weary spine. Despite the pain, he would still heal well—he was barely nine score. His grandfather was nearly thirteen score when he had died, and his death was due to decapitation and not old age. He clearly remembered a still-limber Thrór raising his battle-worn axe in the mists before Azanulbizar. He himself had been desperately young then, not even three score, far younger than either Fíli or Kíli when he had earned his epithet, and yet much older. Seeing his Kingdom crumble, perhaps, had aged him very quickly, then—he was an old warrior by sixty years of age…

_I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth… I wish to part in friendship—_

He blinked again, and starlight fell into his open eyes, filtering through flaps in his tent and draining down to his cot. The night was still far from over, and the moon still sat high above the mountain. Its light was pervasive, but somehow, he could not shake the feeling of impending, quiet darkness.

_There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West—_

There were certain words he could not shake from his mind, either, though Thorin was sure they had never been spoken.

And then he saw it, as if it were snatches of some long-deteriorated memory, seen through a gauzy film, a smoky mirror—he stared down on his own body, and it was pierced and bloodied and broken, far worse than it had ever been in life. When he looked up, he saw his rent armor and notched axe, and he could almost feel the rips in his flesh leaking. And somehow, though he knew that nothing here existed, there was something that told him that they _must_ have existed, once.

He shook the scene out of his eyes, almost afraid. And soon the scene left him, along with his fear. Still, the words remained—whispers that never left his lips. _If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world._

He was King. The Mountain was under relative safety, far away from the kindly West. So he resolved to go back to sleep.

§-§

_The King under the Mountain stood on the peak of Ravenhill, and he was alone, except for a red bundle, lying at his feet. Gingerly, he nudged it, with one foot, and it was no more a bundle, but a body, as small as a child's, with a mop of curly hair and large feet and an elvish sword at its side. Its neck had been snapped and its spine inverted and it bled, and the scarlet stained his feet, and the golden shine of a pretty ring glinted from its pocket—_

§-§

Thorin awoke for the second time, and sat bolt upright, only to feel his stomach lurch. He tasted bile in his mouth. Quickly, he threw off his blanket and dashed out of his tent, where the night was still black and fires still glowed and guards still stood. Taking no notice of them, the King hurtled to the back of his tent and hit the ground, retching hideously, like a sick child, until his stomach was empty and he was too weak to sit up straight. (_Nine score indeed_, he could almost hear his sister tsking.)

The nightmare was already fading, but his stomach still lurched in knowing that its images were real—that a little corpse lay in a tent nearby. Its neck had been snapped and its spine inverted, too.

His eyes watering, Thorin rolled onto his back, away from the puddle of sick he had created—a fine king he looked—and the shadows from the walls of his Company's tent caught his welling eyes. The silhouette of a tall wizard, shoulders slumped, was visible in the glow of light emanating from the tent of healing. Beside the wizard's silhouette sat a young dwarf, hunched over in the candlelight.

"Gandalf—" the dwarf murmured lowly, and Thorin realized that it was Kíli. "Perchance—do you know where hobbits go? When they die?" It was a childish question, perhaps, but it was not a question few wanted to ask.

The King paused and listened, but the wizard was not answering. The dwarves believe that Mahal granted them halls of waiting, where they would be with their kin and forefathers until the end of days, when Mahal would hew the world anew. Yet men went on to the deep and beyond, where no mortal soul returned from, and Thorin wondered if hobbits had the same fate.

"That, Kíli, I cannot say," the wizard said finally. And Gandalf knew that the young dwarf had hoped that perhaps there would be halls for hobbits, somewhere over and beyond the sea, hopefully walking distance to the dwarvish halls of waiting, so maybe, someday, the Company could reunite. Maybe they could have another unexpected party.

But of the fate of hobbits in the world beyond, the wizard did not know. So he bid Kíli goodnight, scolded the still-conscious dwarves for not heeding their bedtimes, gave them a look as if to say "_don't forget what I asked of you before_," and then he blew out the last candle. His tattered robes fluttering in the darkness, he swept out of the tent, away into the pale moonlight.

Thorin pulled himself upright, painfully, and made his way to his cot once more, and prayed to Mahal for dreams that were not painted of blood and confusion.


	4. In Reflection

Before we start, thank you all so much for your kind reviews and bookmarks! Those reviews mean so much to me so if you don't mind leaving one, please do! It really warms my heart to hear how and why people enjoy this.

Now here we have a rather long update for all of you! This chapter starts the trend of the 5000-6000 word series of chapters I have upcoming. This chapter focuses heavily on the past and how it ties in with the present, and we get to see a little bit of how the Royal Line of Durin was before Smaug peeked in. I wanted to give a little more background for why Thorin is who he is-a humongous butthole with stunningly staunch ideals and a very dark past. Also, Dís comes in, just a little this chapter, but we'll see more of her!

I still need a beta reader for the next couple of chapters that I've already written, so go ahead and message me on my tumblr ( ask) if you're interested!

Please enjoy!

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IV – IN REFLECTION

It was just after dawn had broken the next day, over the Lonely Mountain, when Gandalf returned to the encampments, sunlight stretching languidly through breaks in cloud cover, from the Mountain's east to the west. No doubt, the wizard had spent some time brooding, for he arrived back in the dwarvish camp with a clearer plan, more or less. Striding with a purpose through the pavilions of the elves, the encampment of the Lake-men, and finally the settlement of the dwarves, his eyes, still determined, darted from tent to tent. As dwarvish voices began to rise, some leaving their tents to set up new, crackling fires with which to toast breakfast upon before they finished cleaning the remnants of battle off of the desolation, Gandalf swept past, until he found the Company's tent of healing. Stooping to part the tent's canvas, he spotted the Company in various states of wakefulness. Gloin was already doing morning calisthenics in one corner of the tent (which included of Touch Your Knees, a feat for dwarves, as no dwarf in history could ever touch their toes), and Ori could be spotted sitting on his cot, bundled in bandages and documenting something in his journal. Dori, meanwhile, was already setting up different aromatic cheeses for breakfast, while Bifur dozed cuddling Bofur's hat. The unfortunate Princes under the Mountain were still fast asleep indeed, and by the looks of it, their dreams seemed troubled.

Shaking his head, Gandalf swept away again, now to the tent beside the Company's tent—a somewhat grander tent, though small and made to shelter one, erected of both royal and sky blue canvases. Peeking inside, Gandalf saw the King under the Mountain, slumbering even more uncomfortably than his heirs and muttering angry Khuzdul in his sleep.

"Good," the wizard said sternly as he strode away into the camp. "The guiltier Thorin feels, the more likely he is to recognize his actions as foolish. And perhaps, if he has a better head on his shoulders than I'm inclined to think, he'll attempt repentance. I highly doubt Bilbo held any malice to him in death, so if Thorin releases that foolish pride..." His voice trailing off, Gandalf had nearly missed the small green tent where Bilbo's body laid. Biting his lip, he ducked inside it as well, and the sight of the body greeted him. The hobbit's body was now perfectly embalmed in the dwarvish style, clothes freshly-laundered, and it seemed that gifts had been left in Gandalf's absence. A small bundle of incense sat on a stool carved in the fashion of the wood-elves, out of pale green wood, a gift left by the Elvenking. Its aroma filled the tent with the smell of a lovely breeze—the same breeze, in fact, Bilbo had experienced long ago when sent to scout above the canopy of Mirkwood. Perhaps it did not provide much enjoyment for Bilbo's corpse, but at least it kept the smell of the dwarvish embalming fluids at bay.

Moving to stand by the corpse, Gandalf sighed—he seemed to be releasing a great many sighs as of late. With a twinge of regret, the wizard recalled the hobbit's visage on the day he had invited him on an adventure; Bilbo had certainly been more comfortably pudgy then—months of adventuring, spider-slaying, warg-escaping, and mountain-climbing had whittled the hobbit's belly down, not to mention the exclusion of the all-important second breakfast. There was no time for elevenses on the road. Gandalf's throat tightened, and he scolded himself inwardly as he patted the body's head.

Interestingly, it seemed that whoever had handled the body last seemed to have thought Bilbo deserved to be laid to rest as a warrior would, with his sword laid on his chest. Sting, indeed, had been arranged on Bilbo's chest as if the hobbit were a noble knight, and the sight would have made Gandalf chuckle, if his heart was not still so heavy. Lifting the sword off the body with a slightest of smiles, he sheathed it and leaned it on the body's cot. _Perhaps it could be placed in the tomb, but I can imagine the poor hobbit's objection at it laid on his chest in the grave_, Gandalf thought, gently rearranging the body's arms—until the sight of the slightest gleam came from the hobbit's front left coat pocket. The wizard recoiled suddenly—he had forgotten about Bilbo's ring.

There was a sudden, strange desire in the pit of Gandalf's stomach to reach out and into the dead hobbit's pocket—so easily, it seemed—and take the pretty golden thing. He certainly did not know what stirred this desire, or why it had arisen so suddenly, just at the sight of it—but the idea instantly made the wizard feel slightly sick. Grave robbing? And for what reason? No, the very idea of it was absurd. The ring would be buried with Bilbo, and Gandalf's hands arranged the hobbit's so they interlaced over the body's belly—a respectable pose, and one usually used in funerals in the Shire, as if the deceased had enjoyed a pleasing meal before passing on.

Turning away, the strange, sick feeling did not leave the wizard, and neither did the thought of the ring, permanent in Bilbo's grave. _That_, he thought, _is certainly something I'll be discussing with Galadriel_.

§-§

If there was one thing the Company had not been prepared for (other than the death of their burglar), it was the intense amount of organization still needed after the Mountain was won. The matters of the burial of bodies and of the division of spoils notwithstanding, the matter of the Mountain's resettlement remained. It was decided between Balin, Daín's representatives, and the King himself that the main chambers of Erebor would be cleaned and its rooms of treasure organized before the dwarves could resettle it en masse. Of course, sleeping quarters would be set up in some of the emptier chambers below, for the usage of the Company and a selection of Dáin's dwarves (all whom would continue organization), as winter was beginning to chill the encampments.

Upon their inspection of Erebor in preparation for resettlement, the Company found that a rather disgusting odor hung over the treasure hall specifically, in which Smaug had made his golden nest and had lain in guard of his hoard for so many years; the stench of the dragon's presence probably mixed with some of his mummified excrements. "Dragon breath" they began to call it as they waded through spilt gold and jewels—it almost reminded them of something sickly sweet and rotting, subtle at first, and yet pervasive. It hung on their clothes and their beards until they soaked them and wrung them dry until no one wanted to enter the treasure hall at all. It was when Dori burst out in annoyance "Why don't we just _burn_ the stench away!?" as he wrung Nori's scarf out for the fourth time when they decided to fumigate Erebor's cavernous halls of treasure.

Armed with two dozen torches and copious amounts of incense from one of the Mountain's many untouched storerooms, twelve of the recruits from the Iron Hills joined by Gloin, Dori, Nori, Bifur, and Dwalin, Fíli, and Kíli went marching the next morning for several hours through the vast treasure hall holding burning incense aloft, as if banishing Smaug's ghost from the place as the dragon's reek was burnt away. And once the stench was replaced with the pungent aroma of dwarvish incense, the next (and more obvious) task was an even larger undertaking—the reorganization and cleaning of Erebor itself. It had lain under the dragon's spell for so long that a thick blanket of dust covered much of its tapestries, thrones, tables, chests, beds, curtains. While the parts of the Mountain untouched by dragon certainly did not smell of Smaug, they were indeed far dustier. It took a good amount of the afternoon and the sweat of several dwarves to unstick the mills of the Mountain so water could run through Erebor again, and more letters were sent to the Iron Hills for recruits—this time for aides for cleanup, and not for war. (There was also the very nasty business of discovering and respectfully removing the corpses of the great many who had been unlucky enough to fail at escaping the Mountain over a hundred years ago. Dwalin and Gloin, warriors by trade, joined by the unshakeable Bifur, took it upon themselves to lead in the removal of the skeletons, perhaps to save the younger dwarves the heartache.)

Surprisingly, the dwarf who insisted upon stepping up and organizing the cleansing tasks was Fíli himself—the young Prince's first venture into administrative work. Despite looking slightly haggard and rather jittery, the young yellow-bearded royal stood in the center of the treasure hall, directing the others this way and that, ordering in more buckets, mops, soap and lye from the storeroom as his small cleaning crew swept chamber by huge chamber through the mountain. By the second day, more dwarves joined his forces until the Lonely Mountain Cleaning Corps grew to six dozen in number, as more of the wounded left for the Iron Hills and more fresh recruits entered the encampment. It took over two dozen dwarves six hours to restore the throne room, and groups of four dwarves were assigned to the smaller chambers—bedrooms, foyers, washing rooms, baths, and worst of all, the fairly disgusting toilets. At the end of the second day, they had merely scrubbed clean the tip of the endlessly huge iceberg that was Erebor. It never fully dawned on Fíli and Kíli just how enormous their familial Kingdom was, but once the two of them were on their hands and knees scrubbing their grandfather's throne room, they began to get a better picture.

It must have been a fine sight for the dwarves of the Iron Hills, who did not know the Princes of the Mountain before they were Princes at all—they certainly didn't know that these two young dwarves were their royals at all until they introduced themselves. Kíli, though still rather moody, had expelled most of his terror and furor and tears by the first night he had awoken, and instead was channeling his energy in being as proactive as possible, to the point that Óin was scolding him for putting far too much of a physical strain _mopping_ than should be put on a body only four days out of a critical wound. ("If I hadn't seen you two grow up and break your legs about once per year, I would certainly not place so much trust in your healing abilities," he grunted disapprovingly as the two had peered into the Company's tent to check upon the members of the Company still bedridden.) Every swipe of Kíli's mop seemed to be payback to each goblin that had landed a stroke on him and his kindred during the battle, and if nothing else, the cleansing of the Mountain made him feel much better.

"I feel much more useful in here, sweating and cleaning," Kíli announced to his brother, pausing his mopping to sit down, almost grinning as wildly as he used to, "than I would feel if I was out there, sitting at Thorin's side, quiet as a mouse, pretending to nod and agree with all the other 'esteemed leaders.' We haven't cleaned a single thing since we were at Bilbo's hobbit-hole in Bag End, rest his soul, aye? It's strange how mopping feels _nostalgic_, even."

Fíli set down the bucket of soap he had been about to spill, sat down upon the bottom step, and gave Kíli a slight, frozen smile. The two of them had been tackling a huge stretch of stone staircase in the entrance hall, just to the left of the front gate of the Mountain, but Fíli sat down, a little wearier than his brother. Unlike Kíli, Fíli found little release in physical labor, only distraction from the confused array of emotions he was trying to ignore. (He may have been a more capable leader than his brother, but he certainly was never able to channel his feelings as well.) Nonetheless, he gave a stilted sort of half-laugh and said, "You wouldn't have said that if it was Mam forcing us to mop the kitchen floors, directing us like an army commander, like she always did."

Kíli grinned in full, but his smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. "At least Mam would have been a more reasonable commander than—than Thorin, I'd think."

At that very moment, from the staircase on the opposite side of the hall appeared their King, accompanied by Balin, descending from the parapets atop the gate down into the entrance hall. Instantly, the two dwarves bent their heads and fell silent, both hoping that Thorin would ignore their presence (he certainly wouldn't approve of his heirs on their knees doing physical labor) and that he didn't hear Kíli's previous statement. And if the King had heard them, he gave them no more than a glance and swept out of the massive gate, which swung open grandly at his command.

As the huge gate closed once more with a resounding thud, Fíli and Kíli exhaled and looked back up, their bodies relaxing, only to find a rather stern-faced Balin standing above them, looking down at them as if they were once more little dwarf-lads who barely stood tall enough for their heads to touch the tip of Balin's beard. (Balin had never been quite as menacing as Thorin, but whereas Thorin's scolding had usually been passionately furious and full of words neither of them could understand, Balin was one of the few people, along with their mother, who could ever make them feel painfully remorseful for whatever sin they had committed.)

"Did you—" Fíli said weakly, his pale face coloring shamefully as he looked up at the old dwarf they had known for so long.

Instantly, the grimness melted off of Balin's face and was replaced with sympathetic gloom. "Aye, I did, my lads. And so did Thorin," he added, and Kíli's face fell. "But I can't say I much blame you, and if anything, Thorin's already quite aware that neither of you are very happy with him. You did both rather pointedly reject his summoning to stay at his side in organization and at meetings with Dáin, anyway, eh? So it's not like he's any more displeased with you two than he already is, if that's any consolation at all." Balin smiled, and it was a genuine smile, despite the sadness in his eyes.

"I'm just trying to do my part," Fíli protested quietly, lowering his eyes and picking up his bucket once more. "I just don't want to do my part _near him_."

"Aye, and I'm doing my part as well, and I was almost enjoying it, up to now," said Kíli glumly.

Balin looked between the two young Princes and shook his head. With a sigh, he sat down on the bottom step of the stairs in between the two. "I can't say that I don't know where you two are coming from, but I'd like to tell you two—to try and give a go at understanding where he's coming from."

Fíli's bit his lip, standing up and spilling the bucket's soapy contents away from Balin. "I don't think I can understand," he said distractedly, pulling the mop from Kíli's grasp and pushing the sudsy water across the flagstone. For a moment, the eldest and the youngest dwarves sat in silence, watching Fíli mop.

And as Balin looked back at the glum but defiant young Prince sitting sheepishly to his right, and the tight-lipped, shame-faced, skittish Prince mopping to his left, something stirred in the furthest corners of his memory. Beyond the desolation of the dragon, and beyond the battles they had fought, both with goblins and with themselves. Soap spilt by one Prince and mopped by another, faces downcast, but for different reasons, and in different times.

§-§

"Why are you mopping, Thorin?!" a far younger, ginger-haired son of a dwarf-lord had cried incredulously at his cousin. "Why are you two _cleaning_?" Thorin had scowled and kept mopping, and Frerin slumped over in his seat atop the sudsy stairs. "I know Lady Drótt's punishments can be rather harsh, aye—"

"It wasn't Mother who put me up to this, Balin," Thorin muttered as he paused to push one of his braids back in place. His richly-embroidered waistcoat was being splashed by his rather vigorous mopping. "I'm—_cleaning_—" The word seemed to be difficult for him to say. Menial labor was rather a shameful thing for the heir to the throne of the Lonely Mountain to be doing. "I'm doing it because I, myself, chose to, in order to honor—"

"He means," interrupted Frerin (who had always been a deal less self-important than Thorin, and thus tended to be a slightly better communicator), "that he was scolded by Grandfather because we chose _not _to rat out the servant who usually mopped here for stealing from our treasure hall."

"Stealing?" Balin sat down on the bottom step of the stairs (on a patch that remained dry and unmopped) and looked up at his pair of cousins—regal Thorin mopping like a common servant and handsome Frerin watching glumly. "What did the servant steal?"  
"An emerald," Frerin said dully, almost rolling his eyes.

"An emerald? You two _should_ have turned the servant in, then!"

"It was only a small one—oi!" Frerin protested as Thorin's mop splashed his boots. "Thorin didn't think 'twas important, but when Grandfather asked if we knew about it, he just had to go and get us into trouble—"

"We _deserve_ it," Thorin said sharply, eyes fixed upon the floor. His eyes were already too old for the rest of him. "I deserve it. I forget too easily that we've got to reprimand every grievance against our honor—"

The mop slapped the flagstone and dragged wetly along its surface.

§-§

Balin looked up, and he was young no more, and it was not a mopping Thorin and a still-living Frerin before him. In their places stood a pallid Fíli mopping instead, and a sullen Kíli watching his brother with dismay. And yet, in Fíli's visage was the shadow of Thorin, when he was still Prince, and Kíli had been lent Frerin's demeanor, and for a moment, Balin was almost confused. His breath caught in his wrinkled throat.

In a stroke of strange inspiration, spurred by the image from long ago of his cousins mopping as the young Princes now did, Balin gave the two brothers a piercing look. "Perhaps—perhaps, my lads, I can't say that I know about Thorin as an _uncle_ as well as you two do, and perhaps that's where we're getting lost, but I can say that I knew him far longer than you two have. Back when Thorin was an awfully young Prince, too."

Fíli stopped, just for a moment, and held the mop loosely at his side as he turned to face the old dwarf-lord. "I can't say that I can imagine that."

Kíli wrinkled his nose. "It's like trying to imagine Beorn as a baby. What was he like? Was he just as much of a curmudgeon then as he is now?"

Leaning back against the flagstone, Balin chuckled. "Well, not as much—physically, perhaps, he wasn't as different then as he is now, but I suppose he smiled more then. I remembered him being astonishingly mature, if anything. No one could ever believe that he was as young as he was, because of the way he always tended to hold himself—like a king. I always admired him, almost to the point of jealousy, at times. He was a rather prodigious leader, both with soldiers and just as Prince in Erebor. Gifted, indeed, with everything from sword to axe to arrow. And Thorin was quite popular with the ladies of the Kingdom, as well," he added, winking at Fíli and Kíli before him.

Kíli made a face. "But he never married, did he? So they must've not liked him _that _much."

"Oh no," Balin continued, a wry smile upon his lips. "By his second score, he had more dwarf-women vying for his attention than most dwarves had in their whole lifetime. He was never too interested in their affections, though—they all thought he was 'stoic,' when he really was rather self-absorbed, the fool. Frerin often sulked about that."

Fíli and Kíli exchanged looks. Their late uncle Frerin was never quite a topic of discussion, especially not in Dís' house. They could remember many nights on which some of Thorin's friends (usually Balin and once in a while Dwalin, joined Gloin and Óin, Dori or Nori, and eventually more members of the to-be Company) from the village came over for drinks and supper. Dís would prepare an extensive spread, only because she was very fond of all of them, and would yell with a thundering voice for them all to stop throwing bread crusts across the tables. Then she would commandeer the extensive process of cleanup (despite their poor table manners, dwarves really are quite good at washing dishes), and then everyone would gather around their rough wooden tables to talk about things like gold and jewels and evil goblins and the old days. Fíli and Kíli usually would be allowed to play under the table, and would prod the heavy leather boots of their elders above, but eventually Fíli got old enough to want to join them, and Kíli would follow. The talk was loud and meandering, from Thorin and Dís arguing about whether or not to sell Thorin's golden harp to belching competitions to talk of mine collapses and old battles. And eventually, perhaps once a year, some poor soul would mention, just in passing, Frerin, younger brother of Thorin and elder brother of Dís.

Fíli could always remember how Thorin's jaw would instantly stiffen and his body would tense, his face grow wooden. And when Kíli would look towards their mother, Dís' lips would tighten, and she would always mutter "damned fools," and then would very loudly attempt to change the subject.

And it seemed that Balin could remember too, for he gave the two a knowing look and said gently, "Frerin isn't a ghost, lads, no matter how your mother and uncle would react when hearing his name."

Fíli spoke. "But why—"

Balin shrugged, and his eyes were sad again. "Partially because, I think, Thorin still blames himself for his brother's death in—in Azanulbizar. Frerin _should _have been too young for battle then, and Thorin was very, very young for a commander as it was, but Frerin wanted to follow in Thorin's example, and follow him into battle. But Thorin was mature for his age, and Frerin was not. And Dís was the one who had to tend to her brothers' wounds when they returned from the battlefield, broken. And partially, I think—because you two lads remind her of them, when they were still whole." Balin paused, and watched as Fíli glanced over to his brother, the shame in their faces replaced with uneasiness. "It was their first battle, Thorin and Frerin's—they had gone on quite a few scouting missions, but never a real battle."

The mop hung dolefully at Fíli's side.

"What were they like?" Kíli asked, somewhat timidly. "Thorin and Frerin and Mam, I mean. When you all were young."

"Well, lads, I suppose that Thorin was very much the Responsible Prince, Frerin the Carefree Prince, and Dís a Princess through and through. Aye—Thorin was more of a leader, and more charismatic, but Frerin was usually more likeable. Not someone you'd _admire_ as much, nay, but someone you could have a drink and sing songs with, and you'd know that they'd have your back in a pinch." ("_Quite like you, Kíli_," Balin was about to add, but he felt that he probably shouldn't make them feel more uncomfortable than they already did.) "Dearest cousin Dís," he went on, "was rather prissy back then, indeed—she didn't yell quite so much back then as she does now, but if she thought you weren't worth her time, she made it very clear, so I suppose that aspect of her was still the same." He gave the lads a grin, and they almost smiled back. Dís would always be fearsome, and that thought was somewhat comforting. "All three of them were harpists, just like Thráin was. Frerin never liked the instrument; he preferred fiddle, and Dís was exceptional at both, as well as numerous other instruments, but Thorin loved the harp immensely. They used to hold concerts for us, their cousins and Thorin and Frerin would sing songs they learnt from their father." And Balin would always be there, listening to his cousins sing and play in the halls of the Mountain. He laughed. "Frerin used to stick to Thorin like his shadow when they were younger—Dís never much liked the company of foolish boys, and almost always was ready and willing to have a go at Thorin about little things. She never argued with Frerin, but I still believe she was closer to Thorin, because Frerin was less intellectual.

"Still, it wasn't as if Frerin was never resentful of his elder brother and all of Thorin's 'admirable qualities.' Frerin was a slightly better archer than Thorin, but Thorin, perhaps, was better under pressure, and better at mostly everything else. Yet they seldom fought, and I never once heard Frerin voice his insecurities." Balin stopped speaking, and though Fíli and Kíli leaned in, he found that it was getting difficult to go on. He still remembered seeing Frerin's body. "Perhaps that's why—," he murmured, softer now, his voice shrinking as the two Princes stared, "why Thorin still feels at fault for Frerin's death."

"But Frerin died in Azanulbizar—" Fíli interrupted. His mop had been forgotten, and the bubbles beside him were popping. "_Thousands_ died there—it wasn't as if Thorin could have done anything about it."

"Aye, one would think," Balin said, nodding. "But it's like this—if you two had died on that recent battlefield, Thorin would have rued himself for ever letting you come on this voyage. He knew at its start that casualties were likely, my lads, and he knew that his own kin would not be safe from such dangers, but he allowed you to come, because you two fools were so insistent."

Balin paused, and looked down to see that his hands were shaking, and he thanked Mahal for the blessing that Fíli and Kíli were here beside him. "And so—we were so young then, far younger than the two of you, even though we were probably far older in spirit. But it was our first battle. And Thorin knew that he had to command his men, for the sake of Thrór and Thráin, but Frerin was younger than he, and not the heir, and it would have been more than understandable for him to stay back. Yet Frerin insisted upon fighting alongside his brother—just like you two insisted on coming on this journey—and Thorin knew that his brother could die, but he still allowed him to fight. I think Dís knew what was coming, knew it as soon as she saw them marching off.

"And then when Frerin fell, Thorin dived to his side—I remember, I saw—he held up that branch of oak in desperation, trying to shield him, but there was already an arrow through Frerin's chest, and then a blow from a goblin flail came too quickly for Thorin to block—"

Fíli's expression had gone wooden, and Kíli stared on in horror, but suddenly the old wound of Azanulbizar had been reopened and Balin could not stop it from bleeding, could not stop his memory from falling, word by word, out of his lips. The words hit the flagstone and melted in the suds of the mop.

He could not help but go on. "And then Thorin carried Frerin back to the camp, beside the sparkling Mirrormere, and Dís saw her two brothers together, for the last time. She was only two score, I remember, and she sank to her knees at his bedsides—I could see it in her eyes; she already knew. Thorin's shield of oak had saved him, aye—but it didn't save Frerin. Dís wept—I had never seen her cry before, and she shouted at Thorin for not stopping him and at Frerin for going to fight and at Mahal for letting her brother die, but Thorin—Thorin…"

The blood spilt in Azanulbizar had terrified him. Yet Thorin's howls still gave him nightmares.

"…and then I saw them carry in my father's body—" He had seen Fundin's body from the opening of the tent, had cried out and had ran to his father's side, only to slip on his own blood and wake up the next morning, Dwalin weeping over his sickbed.

With that, Balin's voice fell silent in his throat, and he was suddenly aware that his original purpose to mend the widening gap between King and heirs had been shoved aside for his foolish outpouring of memory. _In hindsight, it may not have been the most beneficial to regale first-time soldiers with war stories_, he thought, as he found himself staring at the frozen Fíli and the wordless Kíli, his wrinkled mouth still gaping. He had indulged in his own memories for too long, just like the fool he was.

He suddenly realized just how old he was. And how old Thorin was, too.

"Fíli!" came a yell from above, echoing down the endless, dusty halls, and Gloin's head popped out from a bannister far overhead. "We found a bloody _rat infestation_ in the food storerooms off of the fourth-story great hall; they're big as my boots and swarming—we're going to need you up here, lad!"

As if pulled out of a daze, Fíli unfroze and cleared his throat. "A-Aye, Gloin, I'm on my way," he said shakily, standing up and glancing back at Balin and his brother, his expression twisted and unreadable. "I—I'll call for more torches—we can try and gas them out, if the powder storages are still dry…"

And with that, Fíli was gone, and his hands were still shaking from sorrow—both his own and secondhand—as he went off to be Prince once more.

They were quiet for a long while, as Kíli's stricken stare slid to the floor and Balin sat, feeling very ancient.

And then Kíli spoke. "For the sake of Mam and Thorin, and Fíli, too," he whispered lowly, barely meeting Balin's eyes, "I'm so happy that I'm alive. I'd rather die than ever see them despair like that…" He was not Frerin, and he and his brother were alive. His mother had no reason to cry like that again. He would never hear anguish in Thorin's voice the way that Balin had.

His words trailed off, and for the second time since the battle, and for the last time in a very long while, Kíli broke down in sobs, like a child, and Balin reached out aging arms and caught his young cousin and rubbed his shoulder. _By Mahal_, Balin thought, half in sorrow and half in fondness, _if he cries like this at Bilbo's wake tomorrow, we'd have enough lamentation for all of us._

From up above, in the storerooms off of the fourth-story great hall, Fíli wondered when he would be able to release his own tears, as well. He didn't think he'd be able to cry at the funeral.

§-§

Four months later, a dozen bedraggled messenger dwarves entered the dwarvish halls of Ered Luin with cries of "_the King under the Mountain rules again!_" They had been riding long and hard on sturdy ponies, often through the night, just to declare their messages and deliver their dispatches. One such travel-worn letter found its way to the home of Dís, Princess-in-Exile of Durin's folk.

She sat in her cobblestone kitchen, staring at the parchment for a long while. It had not been addressed in her brother's hand. Filled with a sense of resigned, weary dread, she took a knife to its seal, and her eyes fell to read the words she had been waiting for.

"Ah," she said, and she was surprised. "So they aren't dead after all."

She had been waiting over a year for confirmation of the deaths of her brother and her sons. This letter confirmed the opposite.

"I was wrong."

Tears splattered the ink on the parchment. She had never been wrong before.


	5. In Waking

In this chapter I have several references to music in relation with the lament that the dwarves sing for Bilbo's body at his funeral. If you didn't catch on to the song they were going to sing previously, it was "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins." Yes, the infamous Leonard Nimoy song from the sixties! (If you haven't heard it, it's pure gold: watch?v=AGF5ROpjRAU)

Yet the song that the Company really sings in this chapter is taken from one of Professor Tolkien's own poems that Bilbo sung himself in Fellowship-I was very inspired indeed by the Tolkien Ensemble's cover of it, which I highly recommend you listen to whilst they sing the lament ( watch?v=D8YT5u878Lo). The violin in this song is the same accompaniment which I imagined Kíli to play. If you don't know who the Tolkien Ensemble is, they're a fantastic group of artists brought together by Christopher Lee himself (Saruman's actor and one of the greatest Tolkien nerds of all time).

Thank you for your views, and please do leave a comment if you enjoyed this passage! Knowing what you liked about my work means a lot to me.

* * *

V – IN WAKING

Word of Bilbo's funeral was fairly well-circulated in the dwarvish encampment amongst the remaining Iron Hill dwarves, and more than a few of the healing warriors were rather curious at the great deal of effort being put into the wake of a halfling by the Companions of Thorin Oakenshield. Amongst the remaining wood-elves and Lake-men was an even greater confusion over the whispers of a great funeral to be held within the Mountain, as both the Elvenking and Bard had insisted upon attending. The only wood-elves who had actually met Bilbo were those who had been present when Bilbo had snuck into their encampment to present the Arkenstone to Thranduil and Bard, and most of the Lake-men could only recall seeing an unusually small, insignificant beardless dwarf amongst Thorin's thirteen companions back in Esgaroth. While many wondered why the Elvenking and Bard would actually _invite themselves_ to a fraternization with the vaguely-belligerent dwarves, even if it was at a funeral, there were many more whispers of why an unknown hobbit received such a royal memorial in comparison to their fallen brethren.

"I lost three of my brothers in that battle," one dwarf was heard muttering gruffly to his companions over breakfast gruel the day of the funeral. "All three of them were wealthy, respected Iron Hill warriors, and some bleedin' halfling gets a grander funeral than all three of them combined."

"They do say that he was part of the King's company," said another dwarf in a conciliatory way. "Why a halfling was in the Company of King Thorin, I can't imagine, but he must be rather respectable to them, aye? He was their 'burglar,' wasn't he?"

"We also saw the King _banish_ him, and nearly throw him over the Gate of Erebor, if I didn't lose my memory along with my left thumb during that battle. So that 'burglar' shouldn't be any more respectable than a common _thief_."

Bofur, who had been ladling out gruel with one hand and leaning on a crutch with the other, heard their resentful chatter from behind one of the other tables. The morning was covered with a curdling mist, and the dwarves' makeshift mess hall was a trio of long marquees, waxed silver-blue canvases atop them. The sun was crawling unwillingly up from behind the face of the Mountain as drowsy dwarves dragged themselves to the round wooden tables of the mess hall. Aided by half a dozen Iron Hill recruits, Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur had volunteered to cook for the entirety of the dwarvish encampment before they would be able to settle inside the Citadel, where the real kitchens were. With equipment taken from the Mountain storerooms and foodstuffs brought in caravans from the Iron Hills, they were given the difficult task of creating a temporary menu for the two-hundred-plus dwarves awaiting clearances to go home or to begin settlement of the Mountain. Though they would have much rather served ham and eggs and sausage for breakfast, especially to such a gathering of wounded warriors, they were given the task of feeding a great many people as speedily as possible. So ham and eggs and sausage would be saved for lunch and supper, and Bombur sat behind four huge cauldrons of simmering gruel as Bifur happily washed bowl after bowl in a large barrel of suds. Bofur, who had been serving and passing out drinks, had heard much indignant talk over the upcoming funeral as he doled out bowls of breakfast and bottles of ale. And as much as such remarks made his heart sink for the hobbit they had grown so fond of, there wasn't exactly anything he could do—he almost couldn't blame the complainers. _'Tis lucky that none of them know that we're holding a feast for the funeral-goers afterwards_, Bofur thought. _Still, if only they knew that Bilbo just about saved all our hides…_

With a clatter, Bofur set down a large bottle of drink at the table of the unfortunate dwarves who had slighted the dead hobbit, clearing his throat. "Well, lads, what did I hear over here about a burglar?"

The thumb-less dwarf looked up at Bofur, his eyes first resting on the splint under one of Bofur's arms, and then on the richly-embroidered waistcoat Bofur wore. (It had come from the Bofur's "fourteenth share" of the treasure—the second thing he had picked out from the Mountain's hoard, replacing his tattered old travelling cloak. His first spoil was a new clarinet.) It was made of slate-grey brocade trimmed in silver and royal blue, with buttons of gold, fit for a dwarf-lord and certainly from the hoard of the Mountain. (Not bad for a former peasant who had waited tables and carved toys for a living.) His old yellow hood stuck out from the collar in the back—the only raiment he had kept since the beginning of the journey. A glimmer of recognition appeared on the dwarf's face; this was certainly one of the King's companions. "Aye, a burglar, if that's what you called that halfling," he said, his tone curt and his eyes shifting.

"Well, my friend, allow me to shed a little light on the burglar you're speaking of." Waving aside one of the dwarf's seatmates, he sat down heavily at their table. With his usual genial manner, he held out his free hand. "Bofur, by the way. And you?"

The dwarf shook it warily with his still-whole hand. "Agmund, son of Ogmund."

"So, about this burglar-halfling you're speaking of—they actually don't quite like the name 'halfling,' actually." He grinned disarmingly. "They don't think of themselves as 'half' of a person, see; at least that's what Bilbo told us. They prefer 'hobbit' instead."

"A _hobbit_ burglar, then," Agmund said gruffly, trying and failing to break Bofur's eye contact. "I still don't see—"

"—the importance of our burglar? Well, if you weren't aware, Bilbo's the reason that we're all probably still alive." Bofur leaned his crutch on the side of the table and took a swig of the ale he had set down. "If it weren't for him, see, we'd have been at certain war with the wood-elves and the Lake-men when the goblins came to pick us off. They'd have waited for us to all kill each other, and then would've killed us all in our sickbeds the night after the battle. So even if King Thorin didn't quite see the virtues of our hobbit that night at the Gate—"

Bofur paused, just to spot the King himself sit down alone at the table before them. Thorin gave Bofur a fleeting glance, and then called to Bombur for his breakfast.

Clearing his throat, Bofur looked back at Agmund with a smile. "Er—he saved our skins then, aye, and for that, at least, we're honoring him."

"I—" began Agmund, clearly nonplussed, but Bofur stood up and repositioned his crutch.

"You'll have to excuse me," Bofur interrupted, standing up with a wince, only to catch himself upon his crutch. "I—er—now that we've reached an understanding of sorts, lads, why don't you come to Bilbo's wake too, aye?" With a nod and without so much as thinking of what the response might have been, Bofur swept up from the table, Agmund and his seatmates gawking at him in his wake.

Hobbling back to Bombur's cauldrons, Bofur scooped up one of the freshly-washed bowls stacked in a teetering tower next to Bifur's wash. Balancing the bowl in the arm leaning upon his crutch, he ladled a scoop of gruel into it and tossed in a bent spoon. Tucking a bottle of Thorin's favorite mead under his other arm, he made his way over to the King's empty table with a bow and his usual grin. "Sorry for the wait, your Majesty—had to explain a few things to some of our fellows—" With difficulty, Bofur slid the bowl over to Thorin, but nearly tottered over as his crutch slipped out of the crook of his arm.

Almost uninterestedly, the King caught Bofur's elbow as the poor dwarf dropped the mead on the table with one hand and grasped his falling clutch with the other. "Are you sure you should be working, Bofur?" the King said, his tone patronizing, as it was of late. "There are a fair few with injuries enough to forgive laziness," he continued, eyeing the arrival of Fíli and Kíli, who both had gotten up early to complete preparations for Bilbo's funeral, which would be held in the lowest level's great hall off of the Mountain's crypts. Both Princes stared fixedly away from their uncle—a habit they had been consistent with for the past several days—as they collapsed, both exhausted, by their table, as one of the Iron Hill dwarves scurried over to serve the Princes. Thorin shook his head and took a draught of his mead, turning his gaze back to Bofur.

"Oh, no, milord," Bofur said airily, following Thorin's gaze to the table where the Princes sat. "Even if I _was_ in bed, I'd still be working."

Thorin took another swig. "On what, may I ask?"

Bofur bit his lip, thinking. Then he laughed. "I scrapped 'The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins,' my laboriously-written lament for Bilbo's funeral tonight. I'm sure you've heard of it, your Majesty."

"Aye, I have," the King muttered derisively. "I've also heard that I'm due to perform a solo, which I wouldn't count on." Bofur opened his mouth, as if to explain, but Thorin held up a hand. "I'm not going to oppose to the funeral, much less a _lament_, if that's what your concern is, Bofur. I say that Bilbo's—that Mr Baggins' wake is a large enough event to withstand even the opposition of the King. But if you've scrapped your infamous ballad, it looks like you aren't going to have a lament to sing at all."

Bofur shook his head, and then pulled several pieces of parchment from his back pocket and offered it to his King, who took it and unfolded the first page, his expression unreadable. "'The Road Goes Ever On and On.' What is this supposed to be?" Scanning down the paper, he found an arrangement written in the classical dwarvish style for six voices, fiddle, drum, viol, clarinet, and harp.

"'Twas actually a poem before, written by the burglar himself, bless his soul. Ori found it when we looked through Bilbo's pack—seems he wrote it while we were in Lake-town. We felt that something from his own hand—a travelling song—would suit Bilbo better. So I put it to music for a lament, and 'tis what we're going to sing."

Thorin turned to the last page, and found the notation for the harp solo alongside the lyrics of the lament—obviously written for him. He was the Company's sole harpist.

Bofur looked at his King searchingly. "Keep it," he said, pushing the parchment towards the King. "I've got copies."

"I hope you don't expect me—"

"I don't expect it." Bofur smiled again, but his smile was one of resignation. "I don't even _hope_ for it. Not at all. I just want you to _keep_ it, Thorin—I mean, my Lord."

"Bofur!" came a frazzled cry from above the buzz of the breakfast-goers. It was Bombur—a very large ham had just been delivered and was now sitting in Bombur's fat arms. It was for the feast of remembrance after Bilbo's wake (which had been Bombur's idea—what better way to remember their fallen hobbit than with a feast in his honor?). "Would you give me a hand with this—oof—" He overbalanced and fell over backwards onto his rear end, the ham landing on his belly.

"Coming!" cried Bofur, and giving one last forlorn grin to his King, he hobbled off to begin work on the ham.

Sighing, Thorin looked back down at the parchment, tracing the words with one hand. The other closed over the neck of his bottle of drink. "The road goes ever on and on… down from the door where it began," he read aloud, tasting the unfamiliar words mixing with the sweetness of his mead. "How far ahead the road has gone… and I must follow if I can."

_Pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way. And many paths and errands meet—_

"And whither then? I cannot say…"

Thorin's voice faded abruptly away. Whither then was a halfling-sized grave.

His voice would not join the others in Bilbo's lament.

§-§

Despite the overwhelming business being a median to three vaguely-belligerent races in the aftermath of a cathartic battle was, Gandalf was still set on the business of helping oversee the preparations for Bilbo's funeral. Balin, the scheduler, was needed almost constantly at his King's side, mostly due to the fact that Balin was a slightly better facilitator in terms of administrative planning than Thorin was. (Certainly Thorin had always been a gifted leader, but in terms of allocating resources, sending for supplies, and general sensibility, Balin was the better-suited to such work.) And though the Crown Prince was doing an excellent job of beginning work on the dust-covered marble floors of the Mountain, neither he nor his brother had ever directed a funeral. They had _attended_ many funerals, yes, but such funerals were usually the rudimentary, economical sort of the everydwarf in the halls of Ered Luin, in which the deceased is laid in a shallow grave, covered with the stone of the earth they had been hewed from, as a traditional lament was wailed whilst the remaining family of the deceased cried and had drinks and often had fistfights over what had been bequeathed. The rest of the Company was either still bedridden, tending to the wounded, or busying themselves with their jobs around the encampment. So the organization of the wake itself had been left to Gandalf.

Gandalf had been to many funerals, both because he was old as time itself and saw the birth and the passing of a great deal of his acquaintances, and also because his sort of meddlesome business often involved a great deal of danger, which consequently led to the unfortunate demise of others wrapped up in his business as well. The last wake he had been to was less than a decade ago—a funeral of the Chieftain of the Dúnedain, slain at a young age indeed. With a pang of melancholy as he directed to Nori and Kíli how exactly to hang the furnishings of black in the lowest level's great hall, Gandalf realized that it was the first time he had lost a hobbit on one of his quests. He had taken many a young Took or Brandybuck along with him from the Shire before (Belladonna was only the most celebrated of them all)—"off into the Blue for mad adventures." Yet he had taken them back home, too, always. This would be the first time he would be burying a hobbit, and this hobbit just happened to be Belladonna's son.

Something sank in Gandalf's belly. He realized that he had not attended Belladonna's funeral.

"Mr Gandalf!" came a cry from the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall, and in came Dwalin and Dori carrying the last of the three long oaken tables, which would later be bedecked with a feast in memory of the late hobbit. With a groan, the two dwarves laid it down with a thud against the southern wall.

Hurriedly, Gandalf gathered up the stack of plates Bifur had brought in before and made his way to the table. "Very good—" he murmured distractedly, tossing Dwalin and Dori the plates to set. The sky was already beginning to darken (cleaning this great hall had taken most of the morning, and the wake was due at nightfall), and despite the marked simplicity of what would be Bilbo's funeral, they had no time to waste. (Again, Dori had been pushing for a far more elaborate setting in which to honor the hobbit's memory in, but Gandalf had insisted upon a theme of solemn austerity.) "Cutlery? Where's the cutlery—Fíli," he called absentmindedly to the Crown Prince, who had been skittishly arranging the veils on the bannister, "do me a very large favor and go ask Bofur whether or not the feast is ready to be transported yet—that's a good lad—" With one hand, the wizard counted off the arrival of the rest of the furnishings; blood-red funerary resin, bitter wine for the feast, sweet cicely to bring freshness to the stagnant air. With the other, he lit the fragrant funerary candles on the oaken tables as dwarves hurried around him with the table settings.

Gandalf's force had been rather diminutive, comprised of only six of the members of the Company to help him set up the simple furnishings for Bilbo's funeral. Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur were busing themselves with the catering of the funeral, and Óin was still changing wound dressings in the encampments. Ori had very sincerely wanted to aid the rest of the Company, but the most he could manage was scribe work in the encampment, as he couldn't walk ten feet from his cot without having to crawl most of the way. And so Gandalf directed the lighting of the torches and hanging of draperies and arrangement of the table settings similar to those found in the Shire—one of the few hobbitlike aspects Gandalf was able to include in the hall. _It's a rather strange place to be hosting the funeral of a hobbit, indeed_,thought the wizard almost wryly, eyeing its long carven pillars of marble and the glow of the candles and torchlight and the sternly-staring statues of the dwarves of the Mountain, peering down from every corner. A more unhobbitish setting could not be imagined.

The instruments of the members of the Company who would be playing the accompaniment to Bilbo's newly-composed lament were moved under the bannister above, from which was hung the mourning draperies. And before the instruments was set a short, hobbit-sized table, on which the coffin would be placed open-face. There would be no grand speeches, of course (it was only the elves who were fond of orating in memoriam of their dead). Simply an observation of the body, the lament, and the solemn process of carrying the coffin to its crypt, which would be sealed by dwarvish stone. And then, of course, the feast.

"Bilbo wouldn't have wanted us to go hungry on the day of his wake!" Bombur had cried indignantly and very sincerely when Gandalf made a face as if he questioned the motive of hosting a feast after a funeral.

"I was merely joking, Master Bombur," he had said apologetically, breaking into a sad smile. "In the Shire, post-funeral feasts are quite standard."

Gandalf closed his eyes, and saw the funerals of many great kings and fair ladies and warriors and shieldmaidens behind his eyes. He saw the funerals of dwarf-lords, laid under magnificent stone carvings and effigies plated in gold, and of Dúnedain, their kings of old entombed in the high mounds of of the Barrow-downs in the West. He remembered the funeral of the magnificent Old Took, and the wondrous feast that was held after it. He remembered funerals of many hobbits he had befriended, many funerals over thousands of years. Three-foot-tall caskets laid in rolling hills, or just slightly east in the green of the Bree-lands.

Yet Gandalf could not recall a time when the funeral of a hobbit was so far away from his home, and so far down from the door where the road begun.

Gandalf filled his pipe with Old Toby, and lit it with a flame from his fingers. Though Bilbo would be the first hobbit buried so far away from the Shire, somehow, the wizard feared that he would not be the last.

The ring weighed heavily in the pocket of the corpse.

§-§

As the sun slipped further down in the sky, the remaining members of the Company made their way to the great hall in the lowest levels of Erebor, which meant travelling down a seemingly unending flight of stairs. Some of the members of the Company still in casts and splints had quite a difficult time with such a feat—Ori had to be lifted bodily by Dori, and Bofur was helped down by Bifur, who was supporting his cousin with one arm and carrying a large platter of sausage with the other. The lament was hastily gone over (for dwarves were never really renown for fastidious rehearsal of their songs), and the body of the hobbit was carried down in its open-faced casket by Beorn once more. The skin-changer had returned from chasing scattered goblins back to their caves with the wood-elves, and told Gandalf that he would stay to aid the completion of the burial of bodies and to pay his respects, but he neither would attend Bilbo's funeral nor would he stay to see the final negotiations. "I was never fond of such ceremonies—ceremonies of death or ceremonies of politics," he had told Gandalf. "Or ceremonies in general." Instead, Beorn bowed his head over the body, and left a funeral gift to be buried with the deceased, before he made his way back up to the fresh air. It was one of Beorn's own carvings, fashioned out of beech into the image of a rather fat but jolly rabbit. Kíli placed it at the head of Bilbo's coffin.

When Balin lumbered down into the great hall off of the crypts, he let out a sigh and made his way over to where Gandalf was sitting at one of the long oaken tables. The wizard was quite exhausted, and had barked to the dwarves to ignore him for a short while as he took a smoke. "Mr Gandalf—" Balin began, but Gandalf held up a hand.

"I requested for a short break, Master Balin," he said gruffly out of the corner of his mouth, the pipe muffling the sharper notes in his voice. "And unless you must discuss something of great importance with me, may I beg—"

"I merely wanted," said Balin, with a patient sort of weariness that he had been using on Thorin very much as of late, "to talk about the King and our current—situation."

The puffs from Gandalf's pipe stopped, and were sucked back in. "Yes, yes. That. Has there been any progress in Thorin's foolishness?"

"Not particularly," Balin murmured miserably, taking a seat beside the wizard with a groan. "He has not mentioned Bilbo's wake at all to me, much less Bilbo himself—and even _I _know as well as you that he must commit himself to a compromise if we're to keep the Mountain without struggle, but I still think he believes that his expulsion of Bilbo and the Arkenstone debacle makes the original contract, and thus Bilbo's stake in the treasure, void, so I doubt he'll agree to the idea of granting Bilbo's treasure to Bard…"

Gandalf gave a very heavy sigh, and smoke billowed dolefully out of his pipe. "As I thought—even in death, Bilbo is still at the heart of this whole affair…" Looking up at Balin, the wizard's eyes hardened. "Master Balin, you know as well as I that unless the King is willing to 'pardon' our dead hobbit, both officially and personally, we shan't be getting anywhere."

"He still hasn't so much as said Bilbo's name," Balin whispered, the creases in his forehead deepening.

"And if he refuses to," Gandalf went on, "then I think we know what I shall have to do if I am to prevent another foolish war." His voice was cold, and the look in his eyes was forlorn. "Perhaps kingship does not suit someone still so filled with the pride and the ire and the greed of his father and grandfather."

"You don't mean—" hissed Balin suddenly, aghast. "You can't mean a _coup_…"

"I might mean it," said Gandalf gravely. "Yet Thorin hasn't been making quite a splendid King under the Mountain, has he, Master Balin? Since he nearly threw Bilbo from the Gates, I had quite a sinking feeling—but I, for one, know that Dáin is a more acquiescent fellow than his cousin, and perhaps a temporary regency while a compromise is made—"

"Despite all of Thorin's faults, may I just say, Mr Gandalf, that I'm far too loyal to him to condone this _whatsoever_—"

"Then please give me a better idea," said Gandalf lowly, "for his sake, and for Erebor's."

Before Balin could answer, it was already time for the funeral.

§-§

And so it began as the sun fell behind the trees. Solemnly and silently were the mourners escorted, chiefly by Gandalf, down to the lowest level's great hall off of the Mountain's many crypts. Bard, accompanied by Bain, his son (who had arrived from Esgaroth the day before, seeking reassurance that his father had survived the battle), and the Elvenking, accompanied by his son as well, had made their way to the Gate, their faces respectively grim and detached. They had both received many an unfriendly stare from the dwarves they had passed, but it was unlikely that they bothered them. Gandalf had met them at the Gate and had glared authoritatively at the keeper of the threshold until they were let in. In their wake followed some of the Iron Hill dwarves curious enough to want to understand why a halfling received such a kingly sendoff, including Agmund and his crew, the dwarves at whose remarks Bofur had taken offense. They glowered at the Elvenking and the Bowman, but were silent, in respect of the dead.

As the moon rose, dim behind layers of mist, the mourners made their way down into the depths of the Mountain. It had been the first time since Erebor was lost that men or elves had passed through the Mountain's threshold, and there were a fair few in the mourning party who hoped that it would be the last time, as well. They were led down the endless flights of wide, spiraling stairs by Gandalf, who was as mute as the rest of the mourners. Finally, they found themselves in the great hall of the crypts—more cave-like and organic than the rest of the Mountain, its walls were still rough in places, yet its pillars and statues were still stark in the gloom of the torchlight. The bannister above it had been draped in black veil, and the mourners met the members of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield at the bottom of the stairs, who bowed at the others in the presence of the body.

They were in silence until the hymns began—not yet Bilbo's lament, but the traditional funerary prayers of the dwarves sung at the wakes of their own. Usually sung in Khuzdul when in the presence of dwarves alone, the hymn was begun by Balin (who had sung it when they burnt the bodies of their fellows at Azanulbizar), and he was joined in by the low voices of Dwalin and Gloin (who were both feeling rather shameful at the thought of having spoken out against the hobbit two nights before). Instead they sang in Westron, for their own language was guarded jealously, but the melody was what would be sung any dwarvish funeral. Perhaps too dwarvish to suit the wake of a hobbit, they sang in unison, the melody soft and somber. Such hymns were not often heard by men or by elves, but an exception was made for Bilbo.

And as they sung, a queue of mourners was formed—each member of the Company first, followed by Thranduil and Bard, and then by Gandalf. The line snaked around the coffin and then down the long hall as the remainder of the mourners, none of whom had known Bilbo in person, watched gravely from the sidelines. And as the hymn went on, each mourner bent his head and closed his eyes once they reached Bilbo's side, and then moved on, almost mechanically. Each farewell was made in the mind of the mourner.

Gandalf almost resented the stiff, formal silence—though Bilbo may have been fond of his peace and quiet, the wizard liked the buzz of hobbit funerals as each mourner said words of farewell to the deceased and gossiped in the background over what had or had not been bequeathed to them. Instead, the only sound was the song of three low dwarvish voices, and it accompanied the blessing of each mourner on the body. Tears were shed, chiefly by Dori, Ori, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and Kíli, some of whom wiped them immediately as their throats tightened in sorrow, and some of whom let them cascade freely down their cheeks and into their beards. Gandalf never condemned tears. And as the queue ended before him, and it was his turn to think of his farewell for the hobbit, he found them prickling in the corners of his eyes as well.

Blinking them back, the wizard moved over the body he had gazed upon with such ruefulness so many times since the battle. The body had been placed in its open casket, wrought many years ago of oak with golden reinforcements, to later be carried and laid in the tomb. And in the casket, the corpse laid upon a bed of silken flowers, woven out of silver thread by the dwarf-women of the Mountain long before the desolation of the dragon, likely commissioned by wood-elves to be sewn onto glittering gowns. Their petals had fallen onto Bilbo's funeral dress, as if he had fallen asleep under a blossoming tree back in his own garden.

Just as Gandalf had requested, Bilbo had been dressed in his own restored clothes and his mithril mail, but it seemed that Óin's morticians had taken some liberties in Bilbo's final funeral dress. Bilbo's own cream-colored linen shirt he had worn under his waistcoat had apparently been deemed too raggedy for such an occasion, and Bilbo's body wore the mithril mail under the waistcoat and burgundy dress coat. Over his coat was a half-robe of fine brown moleskin, trimmed with looping golden embroidery and just the slightest bit of fox fur—a rather less ostentatious garment than what some of the dwarves had originally wanted Bilbo to wear, but still certainly not the clothes of a hobbit. The corpse's hair had been its usual, curly, unadorned state when Gandalf had last looked upon it, but now two tiny locks on either side of the hobbit's face had been braided, and two white crystalline beads ended the braids. Bilbo almost looked royal, and Gandalf was almost amused.

But now, at long last, it was time to say farewell.

His forehead creased in sorrow once more.

_ Goodbye, my dear Bilbo_, the wizard thought forlornly. He reached out his free hand to lie on the corpse's forehead, and it was cool and waxy, like a candle snuffed by the cold. Bilbo's curls tangled into Gandalf's fingers, and then he pulled away. _Until our next meeting._

Given the nature of hobbits in death, such a meeting was unlikely. Still, the wizard liked to hope.

The mourners pulled back and the hymn died away, and they all stood for a moment to exhale. And then six dwarves stepped out of the group to begin the lament.

It had been a last-minute modification to the lament that the only instrumental accompaniment would be Fíli's fiddle—at the absence of Thorin's harp, Bofur had decided that any other instrument would be extraneous, so the viols and the drums and the clarinets that had been moved down into the great hall were pushed to the side for the dwarves to arrange themselves. Yet as Balin, Bofur, Fíli, Kíli, Dori, and Bombur readied themselves to perform, Fíli felt someone grab his wrist, and he looked up to see his brother's face, lined with sorrow.

"Fí—" Kíli whispered, his voice taut and croaky, glancing back and forth from the somber audience to Bilbo's body to his brother's eyes, "Could you—could you sing? You know my solo, aye? You practiced it with me, and I don't think I can…" His throat was tight with repressed tears.

Fíli opened his mouth, paused for a moment, and then closed it, his lips quivering slightly. "Aye, Kíli—no problem. I'll—I'll sing the solo for you." He handed his fiddle and its bow over to his brother, and Kíli nodded weakly.

And then they faced the body, all of them, and the eyes of the onlookers loomed from the dimness of the torches, and they all thought of poor Bilbo and the first song they had sung with him, back down that road, far to the West. Bofur hummed the pitch, and then Kíli lifted his bow to the _mi_ sting, arranged his fingers into third position, and let the bow slide over the instrument. The first note came out with a slight squeak, but as he moved into the melody and let the notes slide up and down, the young dwarf relaxed, and the lament began.

Dori and Balin begun first, their baritones melting with the melody, and Kíli shifted into accompaniment as his fiddle stepped out of the spotlight. Dori's voice was proud and operatic, but Balin's was old and sure, and then their voices were joined by Bofur's warm tenor, harmonizing in thirds to their melody. Then Fíli stepped in, his tenor matching Bofur's, his voice slightly shakier, slightly gentler. And then as Kíli shifted octaves, Bombur joined in, his countertenor rumbling into bass. And then they were in unison, and they sang the words that Bilbo had written on their journey, in the flickering light of the torches.

_The Road goes ever on and on_

_Down from the door where it began._

_Now far ahead the Road has gone,_

_And I must follow, if I can,_

_Pursuing it with eager feet,_

_Until it joins some larger way_

_Where many paths and errands meet._

_And whither then? I cannot say._

Their voices swelled and echoed off of the stony walls of the Mountain, the sound of the fiddle slender and soothing, and it was less of a lament and more of a lullaby. They would sing the hobbit to sleep, and perhaps give him peace and quiet at last.

From up above, staring down at them from behind the fluttering black draperies on the bannister, stood the King under the Mountain. He watched the mourners, and did not partake.

§-§

_Quite a funeral for so small a hobbit_, Thorin thought. Neither his grandfather nor his father had such a kingly funeral. (Neither was buried within Erebor, either. Thrór had been burnt beneath the peak of the Redhorn, and his lament was the cries of the mourning and the screams of the wounded. Thráin had no mourners, and no lament.)

He could not feel remorse; not quite yet, at least. His pride still stood watch over his emotions, and his logic. It towered over them, and made sure he did not take back his word. Perhaps he _was_ getting old. Perhaps a younger him would not be so ruled by his pride. He was too tired, too swollen with memory, too many memories of deaths to feel penitent over the death of one halfling, even though he had once almost considered that halfling his friend. Almost.

Thorin let the music seep into his ears and he closed his eyes, his memories cascading like running water, and he saw many deaths. He saw his grandfather fall, and he saw his body burn. His brother, still youthful and fair with half his skull caved in. Thousands of Durin's folk, slaughtered with the breath of one dragon. He saw his sister cradling the corpse of her husband, her sons still too young to quite understand why their mother was shaking and their father was not moving. He saw elves falling under an ocean of goblins at the foot of his Mountain, men tumbling from hilltops with arrows in their chests. He saw his own sister-sons, refusing to move from his side, and he saw them collapse and lie still, as if they were dead, too. He saw Gandalf, pale and disbelieving as he took Bilbo's body into his arms, and he saw the wizard sway as he saw that the hobbit was dead. And he saw himself—his own grief and sorrow, entombed alive in the deepest stone, and he was weary with tears but he did not scream, he sang, and _the road goes ever on and on_ was slipping from his lips. Then the lid of the tomb was closed again, and the lament of his grief was stifled once more.

The music swelled, and from below, Fíli stepped forward to deliver his solo.

And then the Crown Prince under the Mountain found that he was unable to sing another note.

There was a sudden, stilted silence, and Fíli stood awkwardly in the torchlight, his mouth gaping and the music pressing him forward. But bile was growing in his throat and something was squeezing his stomach, and the music had vanished from his lips. His brother stared, and his fellows stared, and the onlookers stared, and the King under the Mountain above them stared, too. The only person who did not stare was Bilbo, because his eyes were closed and he was dead.

There was a swish of fabric above them, and their gazes were diverted. Thorin had pulled back the curtains.

The King under the Mountain had been standing on the bannister, a golden harp on its stand beside him, shrouded in black.

Without pausing to look down at the mourners, or at the body, Thorin pulled his harp to him, and suddenly, the melody of Bilbo's elegy fell from his fingertips, in the place of his heir's solo.

The lament went on.


	6. In Reqiuem

And now we come to see that not everything is fine and rosy, even though Thorin's harp solo at the end of the last chapter was quite lovely-he still hasn't managed to forgive Bilbo yet. (Thorin has more "important" things in mind.)

Belladonna makes an appearance again! I wish I could write more of her into little places in the story, because I love the idea of a sweetly smirking hobbit-lass snarking with Gandalf as they go off on more mad adventures.

Content warnings for this chapter include vague PTSD and vomiting, indeed. Also, more death and war stories. And Leonard Nimoy's infamous Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.

Thank you for reading, and please do leave a comment! They make my heart feel warm and fuzzy and I'd be glad to answer any queries about the story, future plot, etc.

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VI – IN REQIUEM

The moment that their gazes left him and fell instead on the King, Fíli clapped one hand over his mouth and bolted from the hall, the pressure in his chest growing unbearable. Dashing haggardly down the hall and into one of unlit the corridors off it, he found his way blindly to an alcove behind a statue of Durin, fell to his knees, and retched. Tears pooled in his eyes and fell as he swayed and gagged, painfully expelling what was left of the gruel from breakfast (he had been too nervous to eat lunch). With a thud, he collapsed against the wall, heaving until his insides felt hollow, and then he curled up like a child, shaking, sounds reverberating uncontrollably inside his head. The gentleness of the lament's melody turned to discord, the sound of his brother's fiddle to high, piercing shrieks, and the distant sound of his uncle playing harp became the rumble of the footfalls of oncoming soldiers.

He did not understand why he was shaking, or why the sounds inside his mind were growing so loud, or why he was still retching when there was nothing left inside of him. There weren't even any tears left, and they had not been spent in mourning Bilbo—his only tears had fallen when he was vomiting. And when he retched again, shame and chaos and fear fell from his mouth and pooled with the rest of his sick.

He didn't understand anything at all. He could only tremble and gag on his own confusion in the dark of the crypts of the Mountain.

§-§

When the sound of Thorin's harp finally faded, and the King disappeared again behind the black veil of the bannister, and it was finally time for them to lay Bilbo in his tomb, Balin excused himself hurriedly, apologizing both to his fellows and to Bilbo's corpse that he could not be a pallbearer as he had promised. Kíli took his place, his eyes full of worry for his brother, and he and Dwalin, Glóin, and Dori lifted Bilbo's casket and began the slow march into the crypts, followed by the rest of the mourners. So Balin made his way down the opposite corridor to follow the Crown Prince, Gandalf gazing searchingly down the corridor in his wake.

Finding Fíli was not difficult—Balin only had to follow the path of the dark corridor blindly until he heard the terrible sound of gagging mixed with sobs. "My lad?" he whispered in the dark. When Fíli gave no answer, Balin fumbled in his pocket for his tinderbox, and then felt on the wall for a torch. After a moment, a tongue of flame lit the alcove, and he saw his young yellow-bearded cousin shivering against the wall, sitting lamely before pools his own sick, behind an imperious statue of Durin. With a heavy sigh, Balin stepped around the statue, almost slipping on Fíli's puddle of sick before taking hold of the Prince's shoulders and pulling him up to sit on the base of the statue. "My dear lad—what's wrong?" Balin murmured, knowing very well what was wrong indeed.

Fíli's head remained bent and his shoulders stiff, his breathing ragged. It was as if he was a child once more, like he had a terrible nightmare and his mother was trying to soothe him. But he was not a child—he was over four score, an adult indeed, and his mother was far over the Mountains to the West, and this nightmare was a waking dream. He was the Prince—he was too old for this—too proper for this. He had never been like this before, and he could not surmise why phantom pain wracked his body the way it did now. "I don't—_understand_—" he mumbled in between involuntary gags, blindly pushing Balin away. "I don't understand_—any of this—_" His voice grew violent, and he shook in terror for things that were not there. There were drums inside his head—the voices and fiddles and harps had gone and were replaced with constant, ringing drumbeats. He could almost hear the war cries. "I haven't been able to cry—not once—and my hands have been shaking and I've been shaking and I couldn't sing—I couldn't even sing for _Bilbo_, and I couldn't cry for him—I'm not even crying for him _now_—" He stopped, and the sobs made his muscles tense and quiver, and he looked up at Balin in horror. "Please tell me why I'm crying," he whispered.

Of course, Balin knew why. It was always the same reason, and he had seen it many times. His father had warned him about it, many years ago, when Fundin had set his helm on his son at the mouth of Khazad-dûm, and they had set out upon the battlefield, resignation written in the creases on Fundin's face. He had seen it in his younger brother, shadows of it, behind Dwalin's glorying in the heat of battle. And there were hints of it behind the eyes of every member of the Company, now. It is not something to be ashamed of. There is nothing wrong with crying over it.

The old dwarf took one, long look at his cousin's despair, and it was like seeing a ghost. He had worn that expression too, long ago. And so had Thorin. Thorin wore it still, often when he was sleeping. But in Fíli it was fresh and still raw and bleeding. So Balin took a deep, steadying breath, and sat down beside Fíli at the base of Durin's statue.

"It isn't because you're weak, if you're wondering that, my lad," he said, placing one hand back on Fíli's quaking shoulder. "Nay, it's never because you're weak."

"But I must be," gasped Fíli, looking up unseeingly. "Even when I was a child, I _never_—and somehow it's only now—" He laughed weakly, his jaw shaking. "By Mahal, I'm too old to be doing this—"

"You're never too old to be in despair," Balin said softly. "I know exactly what pains you, my lad, and you must listen to me, because it is not because you are weak or childish or broken. And it is not because you are not brave. It was your first battle—"

"Don't attempt to—to patronize me—it was _Kíli's_ first battle too!" Fíli snapped hopelessly, dashing the tears from his eyes, only for new ones to form in their place. "And don't tell me that _Bombur _or _Ori_ have fought in battles before, and I don't see them rolling around like some sort of—"

"Kíli staunchly refuses to internalize his emotions the way you do, my lad," Balin said quietly. "And neither Bombur nor Ori was in the thick of battle the way you were, and neither of them was suddenly thrust upon the role of Crown Prince of Erebor. Aye, I'd say that's the worst of it for you. None of us ran to protect the King the way you and your brother did, and none of us fell in battle thinking that we had failed our families. You saw Kíli and Thorin fall, and you thought it was your fault. You don't remember being dragged into the tents of healing, my lad, but I remember—you were still conscious, but just barely—your scalp was bleeding down into your face and you were screaming—"

"Like a coward," Fíli muttered through gritted teeth, his eyes watering once more.

"No." Balin's voice was stern. "You were screaming for your brother and for your uncle, screaming 'I'm sorry!' over and over, as if you thought you had failed them—"

"Stop," whispered Fíli.

"I understand how much it hurts," murmured Balin, his hand tightening on Fíli's shoulder, and he closed his eyes. "One moment, you're young and bright and ready to go and defend your people—and then you see that the battlefield is grey, and there is little glory in the blood spilt, and as brave as you are, you cower in your armor as you see your kin fall around you. And you, my lad," he said, his voice full of patient sorrow, "had the worst of it. You were suddenly your uncle's heir, suddenly Prince, and after living the majority of your life nameless and confident and free, you were suddenly given this burden to be victorious, to go on. And when you saw your brother fall in defense of the King, and then you hit the ground, I can't imagine what you thought—"

"I thought I was going to die," Fíli murmured, his head bowed. "And I thought that I had let Thorin down, and that I had abandoned Kíli—and now every moment is pregnant with the fear that I'll fail and let them down again, and it makes me sick to my stomach—I can't let them down and _I haven't been able to stop shaking_—"

"I heard the exact same words," said Balin softly, "spoken by your uncle, over a century ago. He repeats them, every so often, but I remember—he was a great deal more mature than you, but perhaps not in a good way—he was far older than his age could show, yet I remember hearing him whisper to himself those words many times after Azanulbizar, and I remember seeing the same sort of tears falling from his eyes—he saw his brother fall, and his King, and as heir, he couldn't let anyone down…" _Which is why we are here now_, Balin thought. _Because Thorin would have rather died trying than he would have lived with his failure._

"But Kíli got up again, and so did Thorin—Frerin didn't, and Thrór didn't," said Fíli, his voice rising tensely. "The only one of us who died was _Bilbo_, and I didn't let them down, or so I tell myself—so why am I so scared? Why can't I enjoy myself _cleaning_ the way that Kíli does?!"

After a long pause, Balin opened his eyes and stared searchingly at the King's heir. "Because your first experience in being a Prince was thinking that you failed," he said finally, wearily. At least Thorin had been a Prince since the day he was born, and the weight of his Kingdom's fate on his shoulders was something he was used to. Fíli became Crown Prince under the Mountain right before the Mountain was nearly lost. "A natural prince you may be, my lad, but there is no shame in unprincely self-doubt." He clapped his young cousin on the back, and Fíli gasped. "And when it comes to Kíli—who's the more foolishly outspoken between the two of you?"

Fíli paused, and almost gave a weak grin. "Kí."

"And who cried and yelled more when you were children?"

"Kí…"

"And who often spent long hours babbling to poor Old Cousin Balin during his visits about how angry he was with his blockhead of a brother?"

"Did he really do that—"

"Kíli never bottled up his emotions and put on a princely face as to not disappoint his demanding mother and his fool of an uncle the way that _you_ did, my lad. Of course, you were always a model of self-confidence and self-control, aye, but that probably came at the expense of actually expressing how much things hurt, am I right, my lad?"

"I suppose so—" Fíli murmured, dashing the tears from his eyes again. "It doesn't make me any less _stupidly _scared, though—"

"There's nothing to be ashamed about being scared, my lad," Balin said dismissively, squeezing Fíli's shoulder again. "Perhaps—perhaps that sort of ideology is why Thorin's the kingly fool he is now—too many years of bottling up fear of failure, and now he's too afraid to even consult his emotions whatsoever—failure isn't an option for our King, and perhaps that's what made him this way. But you, my lad, are still young—" Balin gave Fíli a sad smile. "There's no reason for you to bottle up your fear, and there's no reason to worry about failure, even if you are Crown Prince. Don't you ever think of yourself as a failure—not even when you _have_ failed, my lad."

Fíli smiled hollowly back. "I would have failed if we had died. I don't think I would have been able to face Thorin or any of our forefathers in the halls of waiting if I had fallen."

"Your forefathers would have held nothing against you, my lad," Balin sighed gently, patting his young cousin's shoulder wearily. "Dying with remorse for things you have done or not done is better than dying with a hardened heart. Never be ashamed of your remorse—never seal it up and wait for it to boil over—"

They sat in silence for a long while again, in the shadow of Durin's statue, the light of the torch flickering orange and gold on the walls, their shadows casting strange shapes behind the shadow of Durin. Finally, Fíli looked up at his elder cousin. "Balin?"

"Aye, my lad?"

"How do you know all this? I know that you lived it, but—"

"Because, as I've said, I've seen it all before." Now it was Balin's turn to smile hollowly. "This doesn't stop here—your wounds will keep hurting for years, like Thorin's did. When they _do_ ache, don't be afraid of acting unkingly—don't build a wall. I should have told all of this to Thorin, back when the fears were still fresh and malleable in his mind. But I was too young, and too confused myself to have told him anything—so now I'm telling you, my lad, so perhaps the pain can be dulled a little better."

"You think it's too late for him," Fíli said quietly, "and not too late for me."

"You're still young, and still changeable—and Thorin—" Balin paused, and thought of Thorin, and how Bilbo's lament fell from his harp strings—the first music he had played since their unexpected party. "Perhaps Thorin is not so far gone as we might think."

Silence fell again, and Fíli sat up a little straighter, the grief fading from his lips, just slightly. Finally, Balin smiled, the hollowness in his eyes waning. "Come on, my lad—let's go fetch a mop. Your sick won't clean itself."

And whilst Fíli went off to fetch a mop, and Balin off to fetch soap and water, a final slab of ivory marble laid over Bilbo's tomb. Sting was at the corpse's side, and his hands were folded over his belly, as if he was full from the feast his mourners would eat. A circle of painstakingly-etched glass, two feet in diameter was set atop the marble of the tomb, so the hobbit's still face and abdomen could be seen, and a glint of gold could be seen peeking out of his pocket. The etching read, in the tongues of Men and Dwarves, "_Chosen for the lucky number – Bilbo Baggins of the Shire._" His lucky number hadn't been lucky enough to save him, no, but the hobbit was lucky enough to have a royal sendoff.

The night of the funeral ended in mopping for two of its mourners, and in feast for the rest of them, but not for the King.

Whilst the mourners were merrymaking in memoriam of the halfling, the King under the Mountain stood at the round green door of Bilbo's crypt, put one hand on its shining brass knob, and pushed.

§-§

Gandalf stood and stared at the tomb, resignation creasing his eyes. _At least, _Gandalf thought, _Bilbo's tomb is fair enough._ It had been carved in the pseudo-hobbit-hole crypt out of green marble, veined in gold, and the glass inlay atop it reflected the light of the candles mounted on the freshly-whitewashed stone walls of the crypt. (Ori, who had directed most of the artistic design of the crypt from his sickbed, had wanted the walls to be painted a creamy sepia, as the walls were in Bag End, but the paint supplies of Erebor had dried up since the arrival of the dragon. So instead, they had mixed lime with water for a temporary paint job whilst supplies from the Iron Hills were still in transit. Those who had leaned against the walls of the crypt during the entombing of the body came out of the crypt with half their sleeve covered in white powder.) The rounded wooden pillars that would have usually been formed to fit against curved walls in an actual hobbit-hole were replaced by straight wooden ones, and the walls were already preexisting and vertical. The dwarves had tried their best in the time that they had, but this was no Bag End. Yet amongst the vast halls of dark and beautiful marble of the dwarves, it was the next closest thing.

Gandalf looked on unseeingly, and then Belladonna Took was beside him.

She was older than Gandalf had ever remembered her in life—her honey-blonde curls had turned grey, and lines creased her fair little face. Her eyes, still the same misty blue, were on the tomb, and she did not look up at the wizard. Her lips were caught in a strange sort of half-smile of wistful surprise, resigned sorrow. "Of all things, this seems the most _unexpected_," she said softly, and her eyes moved to the face of her son, pale under the glass of his tomb.

Sorrow lining his face again, the wizard looked down at Belladonna. "I've never lost a hobbit before," murmured Gandalf hoarsely to his old friend. "Not even you, my dear Bella—and you positively leapt at the prospect of danger… I've brought every single one home, until now."

"We very nearly got Bungo killed once, remember?" Belladonna mused, and suddenly she grinned up at Gandalf and was young again. "When he was chasing after your cart for me while I was at the reins—poor sap, we nearly trampled him."

"_You_ nearly trampled him," chuckled Gandalf. "Wasn't that the day he was trying to _propose_ to you? And you were as nervous as a giddy young hobbit-girl and seized the reins to my cart to escape him? Poor Bungo—I remember him collapsing of fright, and the engagement ring he had gotten for you fell right out of his hand and rolled straight into the Brandywine, how foolish. And then you panicked and leapt out of the cart, checked to make sure that dear Bungo was still living, and then you waded straight into the Brandywine to find your ring. I think it was more the excitement that nearly killed Bungo than you almost trampling him."

"Water under the bridge!" cried Belladonna, as if she had been offended. And then she smiled, and her hair was grey once more. "Still," she she said, her voice gentle again, "I would've liked for him to have been able to enjoy a return journey—the road going was always exciting, but the road coming home an adventure as well. I had always thought that he would die someplace green and lovely, already old and well-travelled. Like me." There was a pause, and Belladonna stepped closer to Bilbo's tomb, and she peered down through the circle of glass. "But perhaps not," she whispered, her grey ringlets falling into her eyes.

Gandalf had not been there when Belladonna had died, and Bilbo was dead when they had found him.

"I'm sorry, Bella—" Gandalf began to say, weariness trickling back into his heart. But then the door of the crypt opened, and Belladonna was gone. She had never been there, and the wizard sighed.

§-§

Thorin Oakenshield stood in the doorway of Bilbo's crypt, and stared at the wizard already there.

They stood there, in mutual silence, for a good while, Gandalf because he was not yet willing to let go of the memories of his friends, and the King because he was not yet willing for another quarrel with the wizard. He stared at the wizard, and the wizard stared at the spot above Bilbo's tomb where the ghost of his friend had stood, looking down at her dead son.

Awkwardly, Thorin moved as if to step out and close the door, but Gandalf held up a wrinkled hand, still gazing at the tomb. "Don't mind me, my Lord. Don't leave now."

Brow furrowed, the King cleared his throat and stepped through the round doorway and into the crypt, closing the door heavily behind him. When he turned around, his eyes fell not on the tomb, but back on the eyes of the wizard above him. "I suppose you're going to chastise me, Master Gandalf?" There was no trace of mourning in his voice—if there was, it was well-hidden. "Tell me how you didn't expect to see me here, of all places, and tell me how I have no right—"

"I _fully_ expected you here, Thorin," said Gandalf gruffly, and he turned to face the King, Belladonna's smile fading away into his memory. "And this _is_ your Kingdom, anyway. You have full rights to be anywhere you wish in the Mountain. I don't pretend to hold dominion over any of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, and especially not the dwarves."

"You say that _now_," Thorin grumbled, and his gaze flitted to the tomb, but he looked away as soon as he looked upon it. There was the slightest trace of shame in the creases on his forehead.

"At the very least," Gandalf sighed, "your harp was heard again. You played a fair solo in Bilbo's lament. I'll give you that, your Majesty."

Thorin cast an accusatory glance at the wizard, a shade of embarrassment in the dark circles under his eyes, and Gandalf's eyes narrowed in return. "Tell me, your Highness," the wizard said pensively. "Was the sound of your harp meant to rescue your Crown Prince alone, or did it also play for the sake of the deceased?"

Thorin did not speak, did not choose to admit that his nightmares had been filled with visions of hobbit-sized corpses, and silence fell again. The wizard cursed the dwarves inwardly once more. The candlelight flickered on their faces, and cast Thorin's face into shadow. "You run from it," Gandalf said finally, crossing his good arm over his broken one. "But you can't quite run forever, Master Dwarf."

"Run from _what_, exactly?"

"Quite a few things, indeed—but I suppose a better expression for dwarves would be 'you're building a wall.' And in your case, your wall has been in construction for most of your life, indeed—I certainly can't expect anything to seep out, can I."

"There is no need to patronize me, Gandalf," Thorin muttered lowly, and he raised his eyes to glare at the wizard's. "I did not reclaim my throne in my ancestral Kingdom only to be told off by a wizard on matters of my own accord. I am the King, and this is _my_ Mountain, and I shall not be swayed by the words of a wizard who is neither here nor there."

"Then why are you here," Gandalf said, his voice stern and his eyes sterner, "in the crypt of someone you considered to be a turncoat?"

Thorin glared back at the wizard, and then, almost defiantly, he turned to the tomb, and his eyes dropped to the round window to Mr Baggins' corpse. One of his calloused hands stretched out to touch the smooth, ridged marble. Óin's embalmment had been well-practiced and well-administrated, but still, the corpse's skin was pale and almost translucent, the lips dry and a vaguely purplish beige. The candlelight flickering through the glass seeped through the corpse's skin, casting deep, hollowed shadows. But the hands were laid over the belly, as if full, and the eyes had been closed gently, as if content. There was a semblance of the fairness of the Shire on the corpse's visage, and Thorin had seen far worse corpses laid to rest.

Still, something in his stomach refused to sit.

"Have you decided to forgive him yet?" Gandalf said quietly, in a tone that was distinctly unhopeful.

"No," Thorin murmured, and Gandalf did not sigh, because he was quite expecting that. Instead he nodded and rolled his eyes. Thorin did not notice. "And I don't think I ever shall," he went on, his voice grim. "Not till my dying day."

"Of course not," Gandalf muttered. "Do you really believe that poor Bilbo deserved your exile, your Majesty?"

Thorin looked up from the tomb, his countenance severe. "Whether he deserved it or not, I cannot forgive him."

"Not while your pride is still intact." Gandalf was already debating in his mind who exactly he would lobby for regency once they had gotten Thorin out of the way. He sighed, and turned to reach down for the doorknob and opened the crypt's round door. "At least dearest Bilbo was honored today."

The King looked back at the wizard. "If it pleases you to know, then I _am _honoring one thing of Mr Baggins'."

"Are you?" said Gandalf, straightening up and making no effort to hide the disdain heavy in his voice.

"I am." Thorin glanced fleetingly back at the hobbit's tomb, then looked up imperiously at the wizard, coloring slightly. "I may not concede to honoring his _memory_, no—but before this, I had been regarding Mr Baggins' agreement signed at the beginning of this quest as void. I _shall_ honor it now. His transaction with the Arkenstone shall be regarded as—as official, and the stone shall be exchanged for his original claim to the treasure. Not for his sake, but for the sake of our original contract. I shall honor that much."

And before Gandalf could breathe a single sigh of relief, the King brushed out passed him through the door of the crypt and out into the dim stone corridors of the Mountain's catacombs, away into the darkness.

"My poor boy had to follow _that_ around for this whole adventure?" Belladonna cried suddenly from inside Gandalf's mind, and the wizard turned to see her standing beside him, watching Thorin vanish behind a corner, rather unimpressed. "He should have _at least_ said that he was sorry."

"My dearest Belladonna," Gandalf said, smiling wearily at her imaginary apparition, "that's the best apology we can hope for from Thorin Oakenshield—at least whilst he's still living."

And as Belladonna's memory faded once more, Gandalf made his way up the stairs and out through the Gate of Erebor, the first snow of winter falling upon the Mountain. The flakes glittered in the dim of the grey-veiled moonlight.

§-§

Snow dusting his shoulders with white, Gandalf swept through the encampment, the strain of melody from Bilbo's lament echoing in his ears, until he found the long tent of the Company, dappled grey in the starlight, its canvas flaps swaying freely in the wind as snow gathered on its rooftop. The easy chatter of recently-fed and slightly-inebriated dwarves hummed inside it, some with a bottle of wine in hand, snatched from the table of the feast, and some singing the unfinished snatches of "the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" as the candles of the tent waned, Bofur and Kíli leading the verses.

"_In the middle of the earth in the land of the Shire lives a brave little hobbit whom we all admire!"_

"_With his long wooden pipe, fuzzy, woolly toes, he lives in a hobbit-hole and everybody knows—"_

"That's quite enough!" Gandalf cried, poking his staff through the entrance. With a groan, the old wizard stooped, pushed the canvas aside, and entered, his hat falling off as he failed to stoop low enough. As he recovered his hat and straightened up, his flyaway hairs sticking to the canvas roof, the Company welcomed his presence with more rather raucous singing. Some of the Company sat at wooden tables pulled in from the Mountain, using their cots as stools, whilst others were content to squat on their cots with their bottles in their laps. Dwalin sat at one of the tables, tears streaming down his face as he made a passionate, yet unintelligible speech over honoring the victorious dead of Erebor, and Bombur and Bifur appeared to be having a chugging contest (with Nori and Glóin making bets on the side). Meanwhile, as the Company sang and drank and declared drunken sentiment, Balin and Fíli sat on the side, cleaning their boots off from Fíli's sick, the elder appearing to exchange sentiments of comfort to the younger.

"_Bilbo!_" sang Kíli, unabashed. "_Bilbo Baggins! He was only three feet tall_—"

"Oh, won't you join in, Mr Gandalf?" exclaimed Bofur tipsily from one corner as Kíli sang steadfastly on. "For the sake of Bilbo's memory!"

"Perhaps not tonight," said Gandalf, his tone softening and his smile broadening. "Instead," he said, staring around at the rollicking Company, with a sense of final, begrudging fondness, "may I request a pair of cots to be turned down? One for the top half of me and one for the bottom half—I haven't slept in _weeks_."

And so as Bilbo slept in the depths of the Mountain and the King wandered in the crypts of his forefathers, Gandalf closed his ancient, weary eyes, and slept to the lull of dwarvish chatter and falling snow.

§-§

The next morning, when the dwarves awoke from their post-funeral hangovers, they found Gandalf's cots empty, and there was a trail of wizard-sized footprints in the freshly-fallen snow.

Bilbo had been buried. The King would concede. It was time for the wizard to continue his search for answers once more.


	7. In Reconstruction

Chapter seven already! I'm trying to get a little more of Dís each chapter, because she's soon going to be one of our major players, especially once she (and all her dwarrowdam friends!) begin their journey to the Mountain. It's quite refreshing to be able to write a female character after dwarf after dwarf.

Please do enjoy, and leave a review if you will! I get excited every time I get a notification about this fic!

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VII – IN RECONSTRUCTION

"Gone?" Kíli blurted out, his hair falling haphazardly into his eyes as Fíli returned to confirm that Gandalf's horse was missing. It was still early in the morning, and the fires in the encampment had hardly started up before they had found Gandalf's cots empty. "How can he be _gone_? He knows that Thorin still might go ahead and mess everything up in the damned negotiations…"

"He _did_ say that he would stay until Bilbo was buried, my lad," Balin said with a weary yawn, coming up to stand beside his young cousin at the opening of the tent. The snow outside was perhaps two inches thick—nothing major, but the brightness of the new wintery landscape made the old dwarf rub his sleepy eyes. "And if he did leave, then that can only mean one thing."

"That he's given up on us?" Fíli suggested grimly, wiping the snow from his boots before he stepped inside the tent, pulling the flaps down again.

"No, lad," Balin sighed, and he turned to sit back down on his cot. "It means that he knows that the King isn't in any danger of starting a war again. He wouldn't have left if he still thought that the King wouldn't compromise with Bard and the Elvenking, no." _Indeed, Mr Gandalf would have rather instigated a coup than risked a war in the North_, Balin thought grimly, but when the Princes looked at him with curiosity, the old dwarf gave them a warm smile. "Don't worry about it, lads—the deed'll be done soon enough."

And indeed, the deed was done by the end of the next day, and while Thorin wasn't exactly a hundred percent satisfied by the outcome, he still managed to shake Bard's hand with a deal of cordiality once the treatise was signed. Reparations were thus: in exchange for the coveted Arkenstone, Bard of the Lake was to receive one-fourteenth of the treasure from the Mountain, to be paid in two dozen installments (mostly because it was difficult enough sorting all the treasure's value into fourteenth shares, and even a tiny fraction of Erebor's treasure was a great deal of wealth to transport). Bard and his advisors were to use this vast wealth for the rebuilding of the decimated Lake-town, and then the reestablishment of Dale. Both cities would thus create the northern trade route that stemmed from the Lonely Mountain, and the process would rekindle the eastern economy. The Elvenking, who had not sent a thousand of his warriors to the Mountain for nothing, was to receive his dues in a great deal of very fine emeralds and diamonds, paid for by Bard, and the wood-elves also would gain an influx of trade from the east.

It was a very fine plan indeed, and the treatise itself was dictated to Ori, now official scribe of the Mountain, who wrote it with a tidy hand. The document was signed, stamped with official kingly seals, and it seemed that everything was wrapped up in a neat little package, because it was. The remaining wood-elvish soldiers in the elvish encampment would begin taking down their ivory-and-green pavilions and would begin the march back to their wood, and the remaining Lake-men would begin packing up their belongings and would sail back to the remains of Esgaroth. The dwarves would be left to their own devices, and all would be well.

_Relatively_ well, at least.

The Princes under the Mountain had again refused the honor of attending the final negotiations, but instead, Kíli crouched at the entrance of their pavilion while Fíli stood nonchalantly at its side, both attempting to hear the conversation inward, their fingers crossed, snow falling occasionally from the top of the pavilion onto their blue-hooded heads.

After what seemed like an age, Thorin barged out of the pavilion, nearly knocking Kíli over without notice as he steamed on into the encampment. Balin followed him, as did Bard (who looked slightly less grim than usual), the preening Elvenking, and the Elvenking's son, who shot the two dwarvish Princes a look of amusement before he followed his father back to the elvish encampment. With a long sigh of relief, Balin helped poor Kíli up as Fíli hurried forward.

"Did he—" Fíli whispered urgently, pulling down his snow-covered hood.

"He did," said Balin, with the slightest of smiles. "Buck up, lads—Mr Gandalf knew what he was doing, and I believe it's high time to write your mother a letter."

§-§

As the sun rose higher to the east of the Mountain, the encampments were buzzing with choruses of activity. The departure of the remaining wood-elves and the Lake-men was commencing, and as their encampments were collapsed, the dwarves readied themselves for the move back into the Mountain.

The Crown Prince's commission of cleaning-dwarves had swelled to about a hundred sturdy fellows to ready the Mountain's chambers was doing well, but they had hardly scratched the surface of Erebor's vastness. To return the entirety Mountain to its state when it had been abandoned would take, if the numbers of arriving dwarves would continue to grow, two to three months, according to Balin, who had taken the two Princes to the Mountain's gigantic library to find the old layouts of the Kingdom in order to give them a better feel of what they ruled over. Of the citadel alone, there were seven vast levels—the forth level was the middle level, and it was actually at ground level. It held the throne room, the main great hall (or "the greatest hall"), the halls of treasure, the meeting rooms, the entry hall—all the grandest of the giant chambers of Erebor, as it was the most likely to be seen and visited by other peoples. (As secretive as the dwarves were, they did like to show off their own grandness to their own kind.) The second floor held another great hall (each level had its own great hall), the library, the brewery, the bake-house, many more chambers for guests and meetings, and of course, the vast kitchens. A very wonderful thing about the architecture of these kitchens was the fact that built into their walls were little dumbwaiters—tiny metal elevators operated manually. Their shafts went up into the rooms of the nobles on the uppermost level, and down into each and every great hall, so that ferrying food from one level to another was made easy for the servants.

"Ah, the kitchens—I used to love them when I was a wee lad." Balin said, a note of nostalgia entering his weary voice. He had just been atop the gate, overseeing the encampment with Thorin, and had wandered in to check how his two young cousins were cleaning the beloved kitchens. No less than three dozen dwarves were cleaning the kitchens at once, partly because of their enormity (the kitchens spanned the length of the mammoth treasure hall below), and partly because everyone was sick of eating gruel cooked over makeshift ovens in the encampment. "I very clearly remember the King, when he was still a young Prince, trying to rescue poor Frerin and I from the dumbwaiters—Frerin had dared me to ride one down to the greatest hall, and we were going to race when we both simultaneously got wedged in our shafts. Neither of us wanted to holler for help, because we knew that the servants would get us into hot water with the Queen, no—thank Mahal that Thorin was there to fish us out! He gave us both a very stern talking-to after that."

Fíli looked up from trying to get one of the water pumps to function, and Kíli peered out of one of the dust-caked pantries. "I always forget that you're younger than Thorin, Balin," Fíli remarked, almost smiling at the idea of a less-grey Balin getting into havoc in the old days.

"Aye," added Kíli, wiping his face clear of dust. "I can't imagine you any younger than you already are. Thorin neither, but more so with you."

Balin gave his young cousin a look of mock indignation. "'Tis only because I went prematurely grey from the stress of being his confidante, young Princes."

"What do you say, Fí," said Kíli, grinning impishly at his elder brother. "How about we try riding the dumbwaiters?"

"You give it a go, Kíli," laughed Fíli as he went back to grappling with the water pump. "I'll just watch and wait to fish you out."

"If I got stuck in them when I was barely one score, you two would likely _break_ them at _four_ score," said Balin darkly, opening one of the dumbwaiter's little metal doors. Dust billowed out with the door's opening, right into the old dwarf's face. "Aye," he coughed, wiping his eyes. "These'll need some cleaning too before we use them again—get one of the others to head to the uppermost level, where they open up in the bedchambers, and get them to slosh a couple buckets of soapy water down each shaft."

The two uppermost levels were predominately living quarters, indeed—there were over a hundred private chambers and baths carved into the upper stone of the mountain, and many more in the second level. About two dozen of those uppermost chambers were sectioned off from the others, and were far larger and grander, often with their own sitting rooms and little libraries. These were meant specifically to house the nobles of the Mountain—the Royal Family and their several relations who also lived in the depths of the Mountain. Some had been in use when the dragon had come, and others were reserved for noble guests, such as many relations of Durin's folk who occasionally visit from the remaining dwarvish establishments in Middle-earth. The King's and Queen's chamber was, of course, the most elaborately furnished and the largest, and it was adjacent to the chamber that Thráin, Crown Prince, had resided in long ago. Adjacent to those rooms was the large, airy chamber in which Thorin and Frerin had slept in across from each other, in tall four-poster beds carved of marble and hung with blue velvet. Dís, as treasured Princess, had her own chamber across from her brothers'. Down the grand hall was Fundin's chamber, and connected to Fundin's chamber was the chamber of his son, Balin. And so on, with the rest of their close cousins.

Of the lower levels, there is little that needs to be said, except that the three lowest levels needed just as much cleaning as the upper levels. All three lower levels were devoted to crafting, mining, and in a fraction of the very lowest level, keeping prisoners in the dungeon and burying the dead in the many crypts. And all three of the lower levels were even more vast and endless than the upper levels, for they delved deep into the earth.

Such was the Citadel of the Lonely Mountain alone—the underground city of the dwarves delved even lower and further into the Mountain than the Citadel did, and was home to thousands of dwarves before the dragon had razed the Kingdom, driven out its people and burnt them, too. One would think that living underground, behind the gates of the Citadel, would keep one safe from the wroth of a dragon, but the immensity of the Kingdom in the Mountain had hardly made any difference. On that fateful day, the dragon had merely barged through the myriad walls of the Citadel's fourth and middle level, burst through the gates that led into the rest of the Mountain, and killed all who had not managed to escape. Which was nearly everyone.

Needless to say, no one had wanted to touch the city yet.

Fíli had planned for this, of course. He had sent half a dozen scouts into the city to see what they could find, and they came back with ashen faces and the description "It's very large, with lots of corpses." The plan was to have resettlement begin in the Citadel, rebuild the walls that divided the Citadel from the city, and once the first caravans from the Iron Hills arrive, have a blessing over the inner city, and then bury all of the corpses in a series of mass graves. If this went on at the same time that the reorganization of the Mountain's citadel took place, Erebor would be functioning as it did a hundred and fifty years ago within six months. The first caravans from the Iron Hills were already on their way.

At least, that was how Fíli relayed his plan back in the encampment to Balin and his brother, and Ori as well, who, as official scribe, was logging everything as quickly as Fíli spoke it. He was very happy with his position, and even though he was still in bandages and couldn't move very far from his cot, he had a very nice desk brought out from the Mountain's chambers for his own usage in the Company's tent.

"So," Balin continued, sitting down on a large upturned pot in the kitchens as the Princes continued to clean. "How is that letter to your mother getting on?"

"I nearly forgot about that," said Fíli absentmindedly, finally forcing the pump to spill water from its dusty mouth. "Ah—there we go—I was thinking we could have Ori pen it, since it would be Official Mountain Business and whatnot."

"Your mother would _prefer_ it in your own hand," said Balin sternly.

"Fí just wants to avoid having Mam write to him directly," Kíli called from deep within the pantry. "He knows that if he actually signs his name at the bottom of the letter, Mam'll write back with a quill sharper than a sword and words sterner than Thorin's!"

"Suit yourselves," Balin sighed, and he got up, dusting his knees off. "She'll be here before you two know it, indeed—the messengers will be quicker than we were, and her caravan will meet far less dangers than we did on the road, now that much of the goblins of the Misty Mountains have been vanquished. She'll be here to yell at you two herself." _And to yell at Thorin, too,_ Balin thought, simultaneously amused at the thought and dreading it. The Mountain was to be a _riot _once Lady Dís arrived.

§-§

"If you come _slinking_ back, your head bowed and your neck broken, _don't expect me to set your bones back in place!" _Dís hissed acidly at her elder brother. She stood above him as he tipped the remainder of his breakfast broth down his throat at her rough kitchen table. Thorin was quite used to morning spats with his sister when he did come home, an occurrence that had been happening with increasing rarity of late. This particular speech was one he had heard many times before, although it changed in colorfulness of insults every time Dís spoke it anew.

Summer was almost upon Ered Luin, and this was to be Thorin's last meal in the halls of the Blue Mountains before he would travel north to meet with Dáin's representatives—he had planned to set out before dawn broke, but the sky was already lightening and Dís was raving on in her usual repetitive, biting way, waving a wooden spoon in one hand as if it was a scepter.

"Aye, I can tick off all the ones dear to me I've lost to foolish excursions like this, brother—Mother died the _day_ the dragon took an interest in our damned gold; we lost Grandfather at the foot of Khazad-dûm, and Frerin, too—don't you _dare_ give me that look—then Father was gone, and then my husband—"

Thorin looked up from his breakfast, his eyes softening at the sight of his sister. Her brow was furrowed and the dishcloth in her hand was being slowly torn apart. Her words were caught in her throat, and she could only muster a whisper.

"And now," she said, her voice still furious and barely audible, "you will rob me of my only remaining brother, and my two lads to boot."

She had repeated this speech many times, ever since he had first discussed his plans for Erebor, months and months ago at her dinner table. But she had never whispered it before.

To say that his sister's words had no effect on Thorin would be a lie—they echoed in his ears every time he didn't come home, and every time he was not there to provide guidance for her young sons, and her voice would whisper to him urgently and exasperatedly as he set out that day, and her wisdom would nibble its way into his ears on the mornings when he did not expect their presence. Worst of all, he knew she spoke rightly. He did not presume to have confidence in his sister-sons surviving, of course not. He had recruited a Company of thirteen, and not of thirteen warriors. Fíli and Kíli were far older than he when he had first seen the deaths of thousands, and when he had first commanded an army to march upon his enemy, but not really so. They were far more youthful and boundlessly more cheerful than he had been when he was half their ages. They had never travelled beyond the range of the Blue Mountains, had only fought gaggles of foolish, brittle-boned goblins on ill-advised livestock raids, and occasionally the spiteful drunkards in nearby pubs who had dared insult their mother's brother, or, even worse, Kíli's quality of beard. But Thorin was quite pleased with their willingness to fight for the Kingdom they had been born so far away from but were heirs to, and the ranks of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield were not exactly full. And, of course, they were too enthusiastic for him to deny them their rightful place beside him. So he had decided, perhaps unwisely, to bear the full force of Dís' anger.

He cleared his throat, wiped his mouth, dabbed at his blue-black, greying beard, and stood up from the table, the light filtering through the arched windows of Dís' home into her kitchen. Dís glared up at her brother, her lip quivering slightly from behind her neatly braided mustache. Thorin stood a head taller than her, and his shoulders were far broader, indeed, but her face had always been nearly identical to his. They had both inherited Thráin's countenance, shared the same blue-black hair (though Dís' was slightly less grey and always more neat), and the same resolute eyes. If anything, his sister's face was just slightly smoother, her jaw just slightly rounder, and her bearing modelled more after their mother's.

And Dís was brighter. She had always been brighter than Thorin, even when she was yet a child and he already a fully-fledged Prince. She had been brighter than Thorin and Frerin combined, and wiser than the majority of the Kingdom.

And when she stared as fiercely as she was staring at her brother now, she was more fearsome than he could have ever been. He could not tell her to remember her place (as a female and as his junior), for Dís knew her place very well. She had always known her place—she was Princess, the cornerstone of the home, and she knew herself to be every bit the equal to any dwarf who stood before her. This was something she would remind to every one of Thorin's callers who made any semblance of irreverence to her. If the caller was smart, they would repent and wipe their boots before they stepped further into her kitchen. If they were not, they would be sent out of Dís' home, cheeks flushed with embarrassment from one of her fiery-tongued speeches. She was no less a Princess with her calloused hands and her aged apron than she had ever been. Thorin knew this well, and his eyes narrowed as he formed a noncommittal retaliation in his mind.

"I cannot stop your sons from going," he said, slowly and carefully, staring down at his sister. All self-importance Thorin had when speaking with others was always lost on Dís—she was the only person who ever spoke to him as an equal. Not even Balin could speak to him without deference. Dís did not see Thorin as a leader, or a King-in-Exile. Thorin was her brother, and that was all. "You know that. They're very much adults now, sister, and I daresay we need every last axe we can muster—"

"You _dare_." Her voice went deadpan, and her eyes brimmed with scorn. "That's the problem, dear brother—it seems that the House of the Longbeards dares a deal too much. I hope Mahal knows that the sons of his eldest creation all became fools."

They glared at each other as they usually did. This argument had been going on for months, and resurged every time Thorin came home, and it was almost becoming routine. Yet when the Mountain was still strong and they were still young, they had never really fought, not once. One might argue that Dís was too young then and too disdainful of the foolish pursuits her elder brothers and Thorin too self-absorbed in his own resolute honor and his princeliness, but perhaps a more simple explanation would be that they merely had nothing to argue over, except for the little sibling disagreements that could hardly be called "fights." Perhaps Dís had sent a few scathing words across the dinner table to her eldest brother, but that was the extent of it.

Their first argument was beside Frerin's corpse, and Dís had never lost an argument since.

"The Mountain shall be ours once more, Dís," Thorin said shortly after a long, razor-sharp silence. He took a step away from his sister, and her gaze did not falter. "That I swear."

"And what shall the price be?" whispered Dís, her voice low and dangerous now. "Your life? Or the lives of my sons? Or perhaps all of them at once?"

Thorin would not fight her anymore. He turned away and started for the doorway, his haversack waiting for him by the entrance. The misty light of the morning hung sleepily through the glass circle set in Dís' oaken door, and it bathed the pavestone foyer in grey light. Dís still stood at the mouth of the hallway, watching her elder brother take up his belongings, her eyes steely and her fists clenched at her sides. Finally, Thorin slung his haversack over one shoulder, secured his knife at his waist, pulled his blue hood over his ears, and looked back at his sister at the end of the hallway. Glancing at the doorway to his sister's left, he cleared his throat. "Where are the lads?"

"Yet asleep," Dís said sternly after a pause. "They had quite a going-away party at the pub last evening. They'll meet up with you at the burglar's house, apparently, if I haven't whipped them enough for this buffoonery by then."

There was another pause, and Thorin turned to open the door. It swung open, and the hazy light fell into the hallway, reflecting softly off of the rough stone floors and glinting off of the grey in Thorin's hair. "Farewell, sister," he said gravely. He blinked in the sunlight. His grandfather's map was tucked into his chest pocket and his knife was newly sharpened. He did not look back. "I'll send you word once the Mountain has been reclaimed."

"_I hope_—" Dís burst out suddenly, her voice sharp in the languid air, and suddenly she had wrenched Thorin around and stood beside him in the doorway. "I hope you don't think I don't _want_ to see Erebor renewed, retaken—as lovely as it was in the days of prosperity—I hope you don't think I don't want to see you on the throne. Because I do, I do dearly—" Her voice had a note of desperation Thorin seldom heard, and his heart withered. She was still his little sister. "I hope you don't think I don't want to see grand futures for my sons—futures other than working to their deaths in dirty mines or slaving their days away as menial mercenaries, no." Her voice was growing higher, more broken. "I hope you don't think I don't want to see the Mountain again, because I loved the Mountain—I love it more than any other place in the world, more than my safe halls in Ered Luin, more than any of that. But I love my lads more, brother, and I love you, and I don't think I shall be seeing any of you again. The earth will take you back, my sons beside you, and you shall be with our fathers, and I will be alone again."

Dís stopped, and she realized that the tears had come in full now, and they fell down her cheeks and into her neatly braided beard. She had not cried since her husband had died, not once.

Thorin opened his mouth as if to speak, found that, for once, no words would come out, and instead, his free hand found his sister's. His eyes stung as he squeezed her hand, like he had when they were still children, and then he steeled himself and pulled away, and stepped over the threshold of their halls. This was his duty, and if dying was a part of it, he would fulfill that duty, too. And, if so, then it would be his sister's duty to stay behind. The Mountain lay to the east, and there he would go.

Dís stood in the doorway, and she wiped her tears away with her calloused hands, and she suddenly understood that she had lost. "If you do die, then, brother, _I'm glad I don't have to clean up your bloody mess_." For the first time in her life, she was resigned. For the first time in her life, she had lost an argument, and she had lost it to her brother's honor and stubbornness and duty and stupidity, forces even she could control no longer.

From behind her, at the end of the foyer, stood her two sons. They had not overheard their mother predict their deaths, and perhaps that was for the better.

§-§

"Finished!" cried Ori, looking very pleased with himself as he handed the completed letter to Fíli and Kíli from over his desk, which was situated in a corner of the Company's tent in the encampment. Most of the other cots had already been moved out—with the imminent departure of the wood-elves and the Lake-men and the now briskly-falling November snow, there had been an overwhelming majority to hasten resettlement of the Mountain forthwith. With the approval of the King, the Crown Prince emerged from his cleaning of the kitchens to organize the setup of over two hundred dwarf-sized cots within the greatest hall of the Citadel's central level for the remaining and incoming Iron Hill dwarves. Cleaning was, of course, hardly done whatsoever, but the greatest hall had been cleaned well enough, and was certainly large enough to accommodate more than two hundred cots. Also, Balin added wisely, placing the sleeping quarters of the new recruits all together would perhaps speed up the initiative of the Iron Hill dwarves to aid in the cleaning of the rest of the Mountain's Citadel, and later the city. So as more dwarves collapsed marquees and carried them back into the Mountain, setting up instead bunks in the greatest hall, Ori still sat in the Tent of Healing, copying official document after official document from a transcript given to him by the King, the fat stumps of candle on his desk flickering on the papers. As his ribs were still very sore indeed, there was little else he could do, but he wrote finely and speedily and was quite satisfied with his usefulness. "Hope that'll do, my Lords!" he said, beaming cheerily from underneath his woolen balaclava.

"Many thanks, Ori," Fíli murmured, nodding as he scanned down the official header—_From the Chambers of Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Mountain_—written in billowing, dainty runes. "And good—everything's here—the request to organize the caravans from Ered Luin and everything." With a distracted grin, Fíli nodded at the official scribe. "Now we just need to get an envelope and the seal from the Mountain, and it'll go off with one of the messengers."

Kíli, who had been watching Ori's calligraphy with interest (and had protested when Ori had mentioned him in the letter as "Prince Kíli"—he still felt the title was too stuffy), leaned over to look down the parchment. It was written in the deepest royal blue ink of the Mountain, and the letters were only just dry to the touch. "Aye, Ori—thanks awfully for this! I hope we aren't bothering you too much, with all the official treatises and whatnot Thorin's having you write."

"It's no trouble," said Ori, very flattered. "I'm not much use doing anything else, and Lady Dís isn't someone you'd want to leave in the dark, I think!"

The Crown Prince gave a grin in the glow of the candlelight. "She certainly isn't."

§-§

They watched the messengers leave the next morning—over thirty of them, all laden with foodstuff from Esgaroth and a very heavy purse granted by the King. Along with their purses, they carried waterskins dusted off from the storerooms of the Mountain, flasks of ale, finely aged from the breweries, and small chests, carefully concealed in false bottoms from leather rucksacks dug out from the armory. These chests were to be given to Thorin's many relatives for the purpose of organizing and paying for caravans to the Lonely Mountain.

Other than their down payments, the King also gave the array of messengers an imperious royal blessing and the finest ponies he had bought from Dáin. They were all to to go West, along the Old Forest Road through Mirkwood, through the Misty Mountains, and on into Forlindon and Harlindon, and would then divide into five groups of six riders. They would sweep through the Blue Mountains with the cry of Thorin's name as King on their lips in each dwarvish hall. Thorin's many relatives would receive official letters and ample coffers for the journey—each chest contained enough gold from the hoard of the Mountain to pay for dozens of dwarvish caravans and many a migrant to the reestablished Kingdom.

Nearly all of the Company stood at the Gate of Erebor to see the messengers off, as well as a quite a few Iron Hill dwarves, many of whom were crowding around and saying farewell to their kinsmen. Smiling (and rather pleased with himself), Bombur came through the throng of back-thumping and heartily-embracing dwarves, carrying even more tuck-boxes of freshly-baked goods for the journey—the very first of the foodstuff he would bake in the kitchens of the Mountain's citadel. Following behind him was Bofur (his crutch replaced with a limp on his stiffly-splinted leg), laden with more flasks of ale to hand out to the messengers for them to loop onto their rucksacks and ponies. And to Bofur's surprise, he recognized one of the faces of the ruddy messengers. From under a burgundy balaclava and a grey hood, he recognized the begrudging brow of Agmund, the one-thumbed dwarf whom he had invited to Bilbo's wake after Agmund had voiced his disdain over the unfortunate hobbit. "Agmund!" he cried, smiling and as genial as ever. In an effort to step over another dwarf's wooden leg, Bofur dropped one of the flasks, and Agmund caught it with the hand that still had its thumb. "Many thanks—" he said, taking the flask back appreciatively. "I didn't know you were in the ranks of these brave lads going off to send for our kindred!"

"Aye," said Agmund gruffly, pulling down the chin of his balaclava, his expression a mix between grimness (for the onset of the journey) and sheepishness (to have to converse with the dwarf who had humiliated him over a comment on a halfling). "I have a sister in the southern Blue Mountains, and my pony-riding ability hasn't been hampered by my loss of digits."

Bofur grinned amiably. "Then I wish you a fair journey and your sister fair health—and I'm afraid I must be hurrying," he added as he looked over his shoulder to where the King stood at the center of the Gate. "King Thorin's doubtless to make his speech soon, and he'd want the rest of us up there, indeed." He clapped Agmund on the back with his one free hand, but Agmund grabbed Bofur's wrist.

"Wait," he said, somewhat uncertainly. "If I can, I'd like to apologize for my words about your halfling—er, hobbit friend."

Bofur waved his hand dismissively. "Metal under the anvil. I hold nothing against you."

"And—" Agmund went on, hesitation crossing his face, "do you happen to have any family you'd like to send a message to? In Ered Luin? You or your brother or your cousin—"

"Family?" repeated Bofur, somewhat taken aback. "No, no—that's fine. Our mam died years ago, and we've already packed a letter to Bombur's sweetheart in with the rest of the messages and whatnot we're sending off. Thank you, anyway, Agmund."

"What about the hobbit?" Agmund said, his voice lowering somewhat.

"Aye? 'Scuse me?"

"The hobbit—Mr Baggins." Checking over his shoulders for eavesdroppers, Agmund muttered, "Does your Mr Baggins have any family of sorts? Anyone who would want to know that he isn't coming back? We'll be passing round the borders of the Shire, anyway."

The surprise in Bofur's face at the prospect of another dwarf concerning himself over Bilbo quickly turned into effort in an attempt to remember if Bilbo had any sort of relatives. "I believe he has cousins," Bofur said slowly, "but I don't think you'll need to go to that trouble, Agmund." He looked at the ruddy-faced dwarf with curiosity. "Why do you ask?"

Agmund paused. "You _did_ say he was important."

And then a horn blew from the Gate, and everyone's gaze turned to the King at its center, regal and stern, his grandfather's crown on his helm. His healing wounds from the recent battle were hidden under his surcoat of blue and silver brocade. His waistcoat was black leather, richly embroidered and trimmed with furs, his mantle a deep steely navy, with a border of sky blue. When he spoke, his voice was the same as it had always been, but now Thorin Oakenshield looked the part of King as well as sounded it.

"Go," he said, and his voice was rumbly and low and undeniably royal. "Go and announce to the world that Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, is King under the Mountain. Go and declare that the Lonely Mountain stands once more."

From behind him stood the rest of his Company—his new officers. And in their ranks stood the two Princes under the Mountain, in garments rather less royal than their uncle's. And as the messengers set off, Kíli's eyes followed them, but Fíli's were fixed, staring at the ground, his irises glazed over and his expression frozen. Glancing back at his elder brother with concern, Kíli gave him a nudge. "Alright, Fí?"

"Er—" Fíli blinked for a moment, then his brother's face refocused. With a slight grin of sheepishness, Fíli nodded. "Aye—nothing to worry about. Sorry, Kíli—I was just thinking."

"I've been hearing you 'think' aloud in your sleep," said Kíli lowly as the ponies and their riders grew smaller, cutting a path in the white of the snow. "And I know you talked to Balin about it, and I thought it might've helped, and you _are_ a little more normal now, but—"

"I know," whispered Fíli, and now his eyes were following the trail left behind the receding messengers as well. "Don't worry about it, Kí—I'll be fine. And Mam'll be here before we know it—she'll be travelling by caravan and not on foot or by pony, and I'd daresay the Mountains are far safer now that the goblins have been driven back."

"Aye," Kíli murmured, and as the messengers turned into grey dots in the distance, amidst the fields of snowy hills, his gaze turned to the back of the King before them. Thorin stood staunchly, his grey hairs reflecting the cold light. They had not spoken to him for days. "And for now, it's a road we'll just have to follow."

The road that stretched out from the Lonely Mountain twisted and writhed with the curve of the land, and the road for the dwarves was treacherous. And whither then was always death.

Bilbo lay buried underneath the Mountain, and it would not be long before his fellows joined him.

Yet Dís was coming, and soon, the new and the strange would become familiar and warm, and the sky, though resolutely grey and colorless, was clear of any clouds. More storms were coming, yet the most recent had passed.

They watched the messengers recede into the snow.

§-§

_ From the Chambers of Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Mountain  
To the Honorable Lady Dís, Princess under the Mountain—_

_We are pleased to declare that the Kingdom of the Lonely Mountain has been retaken from the late Worm Smaug by the Company of Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Mountain. His heir has been declared to be his sister-son, Crown Prince Fíli, son of Ífeigr, succeeded by Prince Kíli son of Ífeigr. Of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield, all thirteen dwarvish members are whole and have been bestowed the highest honors of the Mountain. _

_ Arriving with this parchment is an allowance from the treasure of the Lonely Mountain for the purpose of arranging your caravans for relocation to the Mountain. It is allocated to your jurisdiction in spending… _

_ … Most Sincerely,  
The Company of King Thorin, penned by Ori, Secretary under the Mountain_

"Bastards," Dís remarked dully, a few months later, after she had wiped her tears and read the parchment several times over. "They might have at least had the decency to write me themselves." As she set the parchment down on her kitchen table, she eyed the name of her late husband, and then allowed herself to snigger at the sight of the title "Prince" before the names of her sons. She fingered the parchment, thinking of her brother and his foolishness and how the letter had insisted on the safety of all of the dwarvish members of the Company.

She shook her head. "I suppose I have a road ahead of me, now. I may as well get a move on, then."


	8. In Acclimation

A more slice-of-lifeish sort of update this time-I had a lot of fun writing relaxed expansions on life inside Erebor and sibling dialogue. As Fíli is forced into role of Crown Prince and Organizer, Kíli attempts (rather unsuccessfully) to emulate Dís. Poor dear, he really is concerned about his brother. Yet my favorite part of this passage is Gandalf's narrative in the beginning-I wanted to slide in a little bit of the Silmarillion in this chapter, as well, and I do love the Ainur.

I wrote a hint of one of the conflicts next chapter will center on into this chapter-see if you can clue into what it is!

Also, we have a slice of Legolas at the end here-as I'm much more of a fan of the Eldar, I find writing elves quite a lot easier than writing hearty dwarves. Do enjoy, and please leave a comment if you will!

* * *

VIII – IN ACCLIMATION

Gandalf had been "alive" since the very beginning of time, and his memory was rather crowded, which made reflecting on past events rather interesting. And as the snowcapped Mountain grew smaller and smaller behind him, his memory swirled and mingled, like clouds dissipating from a storm. He was a day's ride away from Erebor already, and the afternoon was brisk as the black edge of Mirkwood loomed, tiny in the distance.

Now the weight of a preventable war was off his aged shoulders, the wizard turned his attention back to the entirety of Middle-earth—his "chessboard," as he liked to call it. That's what his job was—he played chess for Middle-earth against a veiled opponent, and the games took millennia, and every piece was integral and every action touch-move. Battles were inevitable, and pieces were lost, but the game did not stop and the board was a thousand squares long in every direction. The king was evasive, always, and Gandalf was outnumbered, always.

He had been playing for two thousand years, but the enemy had been playing longer.

The next move was his.

Gandalf's horse was still the one he had borrowed from Beorn, and she was dapple-grey and light—not particularly strong or beautiful, but certainly intelligent and quick. His next move was thus—to head south and overtake the departing Lake-men to the remains of Esgaroth, then he would follow the Celduin down into the edges of Mirkwood to the Old Forest Road, which he would cut through until he met the Anduin on the other side. Perhaps then he would travel North to Beorn's house and rest then, exchanging his horse for a fresh one. Then he would ride south, following the Anduin to Gladden Fields, and then south yet more, to the eternal forest of Lórien. If he was quite swift, such a journey may take little more than a month, and in Lórien he would rest and take counsel and perhaps sort out the strangeness of the pretty glinting ring they had entombed with the hobbit he had left behind.

The wizard journeyed alone often, and he was never sure if he preferred the solitude.

The faces of his former companions slid in and out of his mind—Thorin, of course, scowled in one corner of his mind, and his bearded face melted into Belladonna's, smirking at him from behind curly bangs. "Another adventure, old friend?" she whispered, and Gandalf remembered chuckling as she sang songs of fair maidens from the back of his cart of fireworks. And then Belladonna turned into Galadriel, in all her power of old, the silver in her hair running into the gold, and she bid him on, for she was not far now. Then the Lady of Lórien became a hazy recollection of Nienna, her tears turning into starlight—his memory of his life in the West under the light of the Two Trees had long been muddled with the greens and browns and blood and war of Middle-earth. And through her tears Nienna reached to him and willed him to keep riding, and he did. Then Nienna turned into Estë in all her infinite patience, and she reminded him to sit up straighter, taking the weariness from his brow, and he did. And then Estë turned into Arien, her flames boring warmth into his eyes, and when Gandalf looked up at the muddy sky he saw Arien's ship bright and warm through the clouds, as it once was and it should have been. And just for a moment, in the bright of the sun, he could almost remember Laurelin and Telperion, and he could almost remember the feeling of their light on his ancient skin—

And then the light was gone, and in the place of the warmth of the light was burning, and gone were the visages of Arien and Estë and Nienna and Galadriel and sweet smirking Belladonna. In their stead, Mairon was staring down at him, Mairon when his face was still beautiful. Then Mairon was gone, too, and only Sauron remained.

Goodness, Gandalf thought, almost disdainfully, his brow creasing once more as his horse made its way through the snowfall. He scowled at the imaginary Sauron before him. Perhaps I am getting old.

Then, suddenly, Bilbo appeared in his mind where Sauron had been, and he stood small and insignificant in Sauron's long, pervasive shadow. But he smiled, sheepishly, and with one hand he drew out his pretty golden ring, and with the other he clutched his little sword. And as he put on his ring, he vanished.

And if nothing else, Gandalf had two advantages over his shadowed enemy in his perpetual game of chess—one, he had the blessing of the Ainur on his side. Not the power, nor the aid, but the blessing. And two, if there was one thing Sauron would never understand, it was the importance of a single, insignificant pawn.

The road went ever on and on, and Gandalf kept riding. From behind him stood the Mountain, and he looked back many times.

§-§

Fíli, son of Dís, Crown Prince under the Mountain, stood in vast halls of marble. Not of the marble of rich green or grey or gold-veined black of the Citadel of Erebor, but white marble, pearly and luminescent in the watery light that cascaded through its many endless pillars. The curtains were made of air and light and memory, and there was the slightest strain of harp song from the distance—dwarvish harp song. It echoed, tumbling from the white marble stairs to the white marble walls and the perpetual light that flowed and poured into the glittering halls. The Prince took one step, and the sound of his foot on the diamond marble was like the sound of coins, dropping and tinkling onto a wooden surface, and he stepped out of the shadow of a pillar. The strands of light hit his eyes, and they watered and he blinked.

From the shade of one of the curtains came that tinkling sound again, footsteps made into raindrops, and Fíli looked through the pillars to see a figure clad in royal gold and blue, bathed in the softness and the breath of the hall's light. His hair was grey-white, his jaw resolute, his beard magnificent, and his bearing unmistakable—it was Thrór, his great-grandfather, King under the Mountain when Erebor still stood mighty before the threat of the dragon. His mother had a portrait of him, and Fíli remembered how she told him that Thrór's coldness had always been a façade, for her grandfather loved deeper and stronger than a legion of dwarves combined. So Fíli cried out in joy, and made his way to the shadow of his great-grandfather, slipping through the many columns and the billows of the curtains to greet his ancestor.

But as the Prince approached, Thrór turned away, and his face was hidden in shadow, and he did not greet his newest heir, nor did his ancient eyes look upon Fíli's face. And when Fíli reached out a hand to touch the sleeve of Thrór's robe, it was like grasping water. The joy in his face turned to confusion, and the silken curtains fluttered out from an invisible wind to hide his great-grandfather from view.

And then again, from behind him, somewhere in the shadows, came the sound of more tinkling footsteps, and through the pillars he saw a face—Thráin's face, proud and unyielding, like carven stone, with one bright eye of agate and one blind eye of milky moonstone, as his mother had described him. Like a child searching for his lost parent, the Prince turned to pursue his grandfather, calling out in uncertainty, beads of light catching in his yellow beard. He stumbled into one of the massive marble pillars, and for a moment, Thráin disappeared behind a column, and when he picked himself up, his grandfather had vanished behind one of the flowing curtains, too. The cries died on Fíli's lips, and he straightened up, only to find himself lost in a labyrinth of endless pillars of light and curtains of music and footsteps like waterfalls of trickling coins. His head spun, and from every angle was blinding light, discordant harp, white marble. Whatever noble dignity Fíli would usually wear proudly was gone, and he was alone and not alone and lost in endless halls of light and the sound of his own breathing.

Without warning, there was a hand gripping his wrist, and Fíli's breath caught in his throat as he spun round to see his younger brother's face, smiling cheekily, like always. "Oh, Kí—" he said, relief relaxing his body, a grin crawling back over his lips. "I almost thought I was lost here for a moment."

"No worries," reassured Kíli, his smile softening, warming—it's usually the other way around, thought the Crown Prince. I'm usually the one reassuring him. "It's all fine here, anyway—Thorin's here, too. They're all here."

"Thorin? 'They'?"

And sure enough, as Fíli stared around at the boundless hall, he saw that from each shadowed alcove, behind every soaring pillar, stood a Longbeard King, sure and noble, all bearing a resemblance to each of the Princes in one way or another. And then from the wisps of curtains they emerged, and Thorin was amongst them, black-bearded with trails of grey. He stared into the light and the air, the light glinting off of the silver in his hair. "Thorin!" Fíli cried, his confusion breaking into fondness as he forgot all of the grievances he had with his uncle, all of the moments since they had retaken the Mountain when he had spent ruing Thorin's callous deeds. With Kíli at his side, Fíli weaved through the columns to his uncle, as if he were a child again and Thorin was coming home after a long journey.

But as he cried his uncle's name, the Kings of the Longbeards turned away from him, turned back into shadow. And a length of curtain caught Fíli in the face, and when he had pulled it off, Thorin had turned away from him, too. "Thorin—? Uncle?" But Thorin did not reply, and the endless hall of the Longbeard Kings was silent. "Kíli," Fíli whispered, and now it was his hand tight around his brother's wrist. His eyes moved from alcove to alcove, and each of his forefathers shunned him. "Why are they all ignoring us?"

"They're ignoring you. You failed them," the answer was, and it was not given in Kíli's usual warm voice. "They're all disappointed."

Then Fíli turned to face his brother, stricken, but in Kíli's place was not Kíli, and instead he was gripping the wrist of a corpse with an arrow in his heart with translucent skin. Its eyes were as opaque as opals, but they did not shine, and its smile was hollow and stretched and deathly. The corpse stood, and it swayed, and it was wearing Kíli's armor. It wore Kíli's blue hood. I couldn't even save him, I couldn't even save my brother, what am I going to tell Mam—

Fíli cried out, and stumbled back, but the wrist came off in his hand and his brother's blood stained his palm as the corpse collapsed to the grey-white floors, and the sound it made as it hit the marble was a collection of tinkling bells. And then as Fíli turned helplessly to find Thorin once more, he ripped back the curtain to find his uncle pierced by many spears, the skin sunken in and the beard black and bloodstained. But Thorin's eyes were open, and they were still sapphire blue, and they rolled in his head and finally fixed to stare at Fíli, almost as if to say you have failed me. You have failed all of us. But I didn't and I swear I won't just let me do it again don't say that I failed please—

In horror, Fíli fell back and tore away another curtain to find Thráin's corpse, and then Thrór's corpse, and then a billow of unseen wind pulled back the curtains of every alcove to reveal a long line of dead Longbeard Kings, corpse after corpse after corpse until behind another veil slept Durin himself, perhaps not to wake again. Face white with terror and streaks of blood on his hands, Fíli crawled back, away from his dead forefathers, until his back slammed against a pillar and Kíli's body lay slumped beside him.

Kíli opened his dead eyes again, and smiled up at his brother. "Aye, no wonder they're disappointed," he said, his voice cheerful again but raw and cold. "You would have been the last heir. Now all we can do is wait." Don't tell me this is death don't say that they're disappointed I haven't failed at anything in my life don't tell me this is it—

And Fíli opened his mouth and screamed, and his screams shattered the white nightmare halls of waiting, and they collapsed the pillars and turned them into deadly diamond dust. And he saw Kíli dying, one last arrow lodging in his chest as he turned to look to his brother while falling, stretching out an arm, for he was terrified and surely Fíli would give him comfort. And then he saw Thorin dying, a dozen spears scoring his armor and staining Beorn's fur as the skin-changer pulled him out of the battle. And then he saw Bilbo, thin and haggard but living and shaking and weeping over the body of the King. And then he saw himself, lying sprawled on the battlefield, dead but conscious and screaming, too, as he lay beside his brother, knowing that he had failed them, had failed all of them. He saw tears running down Balin's cheeks as the old dwarf undid the fastening of his cloak and laid it over the faces of the former Princes under the Mountain amidst the piles and piles of corpses. He was screaming not yet not yet I haven't failed you let don't let me fail you I'll still fight not Thorin not my brother Mam where are you let me do it again I shan't fail you again—

And then the cloak fell over his eyes, and the halls of waiting were cold and massive.

§-§

When his elder brother had nightmares when they were both children, Kíli would never hear screams or whimpers or sobbing. He would only hear Fíli shaking in his sheets, and the next morning, as their mother ladled out hot bowls of breakfast porridge, Fíli would be normal, except for his shivering fingers.

Not that Fíli used to have nightmares often, no—Fíli had always been composed and smiling and had a far greater deal of self-control than Kíli had. When Kíli used to have nightmares as a young dwarvish lad, they were always fitful and violent and he would wake up, stained in tears and sweat and dribbles of saliva, crying for Mam and diving into his brother's blankets, seeking refuge in Fíli's warmth. And Fíli would grin from behind messy blond braids and he would wipe off his brother's mouth on his sleeve as Mam came in, scolding the both of them.

Yet on this night Kíli could not sleep, and he was crouching atop the feather mattress set into his carven marble four-poster bed—they had beaten the mattresses with clubs earlier that day, to shake the thick layers of dust off. Though the Princes would have been perfectly content with sleeping in their cots with everyone else in the greatest hall, the King had wanted a "return to normalcy," and preferably as quickly as possible. Such a return would mean everyone in their proper place—in the fine chambers of the uppermost level. Which meant that the Company diverted their cleaning efforts to the grandest chambers off of the long corridor of the royals, where the nobles and their cousins would reside. It helped that these chambers were bedecked in furnishings of the highest quality—velvet that would resist the bites of moths, furniture of burnished oak and carven stone, blankets of the finest furs with hairs as glossy as the day the animal was skinned. Such chambers were still duly dusty, but their furnishings would need no laborious cleaning. Some of the members of the Company with no claim to noble heritage were quite delighted with their new accommodations—as the members of the King's former coalition (in other words, those who had befriended the King-in-Exile over a mug of ale in the local pub) and the new high-ranking officers of King Thorin's administration, they were granted the rooms in which only dwarf-lords had slept in before the dragon had arisen. (Granted, many of those dwarf-lords had been eaten by that dragon, and would not be returning to the Mountain with a claim towards their old chamber, and the Company did indeed deserve such luxury after their long struggle.) Dori, specifically, had very nearly cried when he first opened the door to the chamber assigned to him. "Bed curtains woven of golden thread!" he exclaimed, enraptured tears streaming down his cheeks as he sank to his knees in the doorway. "Blankets lined with miniver—miniver!" As burly as Dori had always been, and perhaps more suited for hard mining than the finer things in life, he always had an especial taste for luxury.

Kíli, in contrast, had not been thrilled with the prospect of moving into "royal" quarters, as he was already having enough trouble transitioning into being a proper Prince, not to mention living like one. He and his brother had been born to a household where the only surfaces that glittered were the freshly-scrubbed pots, the closely-guarded wages of their mother and uncle kept in an oaken strongbox, and Thorin's golden harp, saved from the Mountain. He had never considered the prospect that perhaps the most difficult part of their quest was the part in which they had to go from worn leather and hand-me-down knives to buttery calfskin and heirloom swords with pommels encrusted with sapphires. All of Thorin's tales of Erebor's loveliness and riches could have never prepared his sister-sons from actually experiencing them. It was only when Fíli acquiesced to the prospect when Kíli bowed his head to the King and followed suit. They were to sleep in the very same chamber in which Thorin and Frerin had slept those many years ago—a wide, beautiful room with a tall ceiling and a dwarvish fresco above them, detailing Durin coming upon the sparkling Mirrormere. Four square columns sat in the chamber's four corners, and they were tall and grey and glittered with veins of white crystal. On the eastern and western walls were two beds, carved into the stone itself, from their four pillars to the headboard. They were topped with canopies of blue velvet and silver-gold damask, and laid with feather mattresses and linen sheets (washed that morning) far softer than the Princes had ever touched before. (Back home in the Blue Mountains, they had not been poor, thanks to many hours of Thorin slaving way, cursing the dragon every time his hammer hit the anvil, and many hours of Dís rubbing her hands raw to earn a little more gold for her sons, she cursing the foolishness of her family all the while. And when they were old enough to hunt or to mend fences or to assist in the smithy—Dís forbade mining, for the mines of Ered Luin were not the industrially organized, clean, bright-lit mines of the Lonely Mountain—Fíli and Kíli were able to work for themselves and ease their mother's workload. Yet they were never able to afford more than a flock-bed and rough linen and quilts sewed by Dís herself.) Their blankets were made of camlet, the pillowcases of baudekin, and the twin blue bedspreads embroidered with the Erebor crest were lined in the finest sable. The bedding had all been washed, and looked as new and luxurious as the day the dragon had come. "Too rich for my blood," Kíli had muttered lowly as he looked round the room in awe, fingering his blanket and trying to imagine a less-grey Thorin residing here.

"It is your blood," Fíli had said fairly, but a strange expression of unease creased his brow as he smoothed over his new bedspread. On the east wall of their room was a tapestry of fantastic proportions—it was a family tree, and it ended, unfinished, with a small woven portrait of a younger Thorin framed by an embroidered circle of blue and silver runes that read "THORIN II". To the right of his portrait was a portrait of Frerin, who was fairer than Thorin in hair and in eyes, it seemed—his were hazel and not Thorin's dark blue. To Thorin's left was Dís' portrait, which Fíli had pointed out to Kíli with amusement that morning. The tapestry seemed to have been woven when she was little more than a child, for her beard was still naught but a thin wisp of black thread. From above all three small figures was the main branch, swirling up to show a younger black-haired Thráin, before he had lost one of his eyes, connected by a golden chain to their grandmother, a one Lady Drótt of imperious countenance and golden hair. Then above Thráin was Thrór, illustrated with a particularly marvelously black beard, a golden chain linking him to brown-bearded Queen Língunnr, Lady of Unyielding Stone. The tapestry branched on, weaving the names of many of their forefathers and their myriad noble cousins. (Balin's portrait was even woven onto the tapestry, under Fundin's—he was still a child when it had been done, apparently, and his hair was still auburn then.) Around its edges were illustrated the heroic deeds of the Longbeards in fastidious embroidery, and in the lower center, under Thrór's portrait, was a stunningly-embroidered rendition of the Arkenstone, white and gold and glittering. In all its magnificence, the tapestry filled up the entirety of the long, expansive wall, and yet the lowest quarter was still unfinished—evidently no one had wanted to venture back into the dragon-infested Mountain to take it down and record the events after Erebor was lost. So there was no golden chain by Dís' portrait to show her marriage, no mark by Frerin's name to show his death, and no heirs to Thorin Oakenshield.

Yet, in all the chamber's stateliness and luxury of fabric and of drapery, there were still hints that this had once been the chamber of two lads, young lads, despite all their noble birth. A wooden chest by Frerin's bed was filled with ancient wooden practice swords and axes, and a stack of dusty books, many illustrated, sat at Thorin's bedside. When Kíli had opened one of them, he had found a rather wild assertion that listed all the evils of elves (according to this book, there were no elvish women, for all the male elves were already womanish enough). In Frerin's bedside drawers seemed to be a half-penned love letter to a young dwarf lass by the name of Hel, whose beard Frerin complimented incessantly in his address. The chamber was littered with other boyish evidence, from smashed geodes to plucked raven's feathers (poor Carc), and now the chamber was home to two new Princes entirely.

It was very late, and the grand hearth on the north wall was home only to a few embers, but Kíli had lit a new candle stump in the place of the moldy bit of candle that had lasted the century in which the Mountain was uninhabited atop Frerin's bedside table. He had been moody for most of the day, which he and Fíli had spent attempting to get the upper chambers back in working order for the comfort of the Company, and he had been crouching in his new-yet-old bed, sharpening one of his knives in the darkness, when he heard Fíli shaking again and whispering in his sleep from the bed across the room.

Since the battle, this had become a nightly occurrence—though Kíli's restlessness had subsided, it seemed that his brother's grew worse, and the dark circles under Fíli's eyes were growing to match Thorin's. He was never really quite sure how to go about actually providing comfort, as it was usually Fíli who did that for him, not the other way around, so he had never woken his brother before. Yet Fíli's shivering tonight was awful, and Kíli resolved himself to at least try. Uneasily, he set down his knife and whetstone on the table beside him and pulled his blankets off, sliding out of bed, barefoot on the cold marble floor. Rubbing his eyes, he took the candle and crept across the wide room, nearly tripping over his boots, which he had left carelessly in the middle of the floor. Making his way over to his brother's bedside, he pulled back the drapery and lit the candle on Fíli's bedside and set down his own candle beside it. The yellow glow lit Fíli's face, and it was taut in pain, and his lips were caught in constant, unintelligible whispers. His eyes were screwed shut. Uncertainly, Kíli leaned sheepishly over his brother. "Oi—Fí—wake up, you're having a nightmare," he whispered haltingly, squeezing his brother's hand. The Crown Prince only made a desperate, inarticulate murmur, quaking as he wrenched his hand out of Kíli's grasp. "Fíli—" Kíli said louder, shaking Fíli's hand briskly, looking from left to right as if searching for someone's help. "Fí! You're dreaming!"

When Fíli finally opened his eyes, he did not see the mantle of Balin's cloak, shrouding his face, but instead he saw Kíli's face looming above him out of the darkness, it by the soft glow of candlelight, very much alive and very worried indeed. "Kí—" he croaked softly, taking his brother's hand and squeezing it. "What are you doing?"

In relief, Kíli swayed and slumped, shoulders hunched, on his brother's bed, his expression caught between fear and confusion. "Sorry," he whispered, eyes downcast. "You were shaking like you were struck by lightning, or something-worse than last night..." His voice trailed off as he looked uncertainly back at his elder brother. A lurid, bleary memory of Bilbo frantically murmuring struck by lightning, struck by lightning back at the party, half conscious and trembling, had crept into his mind. Of course, they had all thought it quite funny then, but with a sudden lurch in his belly, the young Prince realized that Bilbo would not be struck by lightning, but by a goblin's mace.

Dashing the dream from his eyes, the Crown Prince pulled himself upright, his head still spinning between the chamber's warm darkness and the cold light of his nightmare. Still trembling slightly, Fíli inhaled the smell of their freshly-scrubbed chamber, the stringent hint of ammonia, the velvet blankets and canopies they had laundered that morning. Óin had added in essence of camphor in their detergent lye whilst they had been soaping their bedding, and their beds smelled vaguely like an apothecary. And from the embers of the fireplace, the scent of burnt wood mixed in with the rest of the airs and found their way in the Crown Prince's lungs. This was not the smell of the cold white halls he had been lost in inside his mind. This was not the smell of his nightmares. The chamber was dim and not blindingly bright, and the little light that lit it was warm and radiated from the hearth and stumps of animal-fat candles. There were no sheer, conniving curtains that hid the faces of his dead forefathers. No one was dead here at all. Not even Kíli.

Fíli exhaled, and his breathing grew less ragged as he leaned back on his pillow (stuffed with down—goose down, what a strange and unfamiliar luxury). His eyes flickered to his brother's face, then to the firelight, then down to Kíli's wrist gripped in his palm. Kíli's hand was grubby, dirt underneath the fingernails and in the wrinkles of his knuckles, the palm opening and closing and the fingers flexing and alive. Fíli squeezed the hand again, like he was wont to do in their childhood, when their hands had been less muscled and calloused. Then he let go and tilted his head back, staring unseeingly at the dark velvet drapes of the canopy above him.

Kíli watched his elder brother in apprehension, the candlelight casting shadows on the Crown Prince's face so that the worry in Fíli's brow was especially pronounced. He almost looks like Thorin like that, thought Kíli, with a twinge of amusement, despite all his disquiet. The lines forming in Fíli's face were exactly where Thorin's were. He looked down at his grubby feet, cast in shadow and dangling on the edge of the bed, then back up at his brother. "Did they at least get less bad—when you talked to Balin about them? The nightmares, I mean."

His eyes flickering back to his brother's face, Fíli looked back up, his throat slightly tense and his hands still shaking. "Aye, I suppose so," he said haltingly, his gaze diverted to the warmth of the candlelight. "I don't think they'll go away very soon, though; Balin said as much." He would not tell Kíli that he had dreamt of the halls of waiting and of the lay of their forefathers, and he would not tell him of how the dream turned to coils of cold, white blindness. He inhaled once more, and the sharp scent of the ammonia drying on the formerly-dusty marble floors shook him out of his reverie, and he turned to smile wearily at his brother. "Suppose I envy you a bit, Kí. At least you don't have absurd nightmares."

Kíli waved away the compliment, giving his brother a fond punch to the shoulder. "At least you have the ability to nearly fit in with all this princely things that we've got to do. I didn't think the hardest part about taking back the blessed kingdom Thorin always went on for hours about was the part about actually getting used to—to all this." He made a limp gesture around the room, but then he grinned toothily at his brother. "I guess I should be glad I don't have your nightmares, aye? Do you want to—I dunno, talk about them?"

Reclining atop his cushions, Fíli let his limbs relax, and he folded his arms behind his head against the cool stone headboard. "Talk about them?" he repeated, raising an eyebrow with a sad sort of grin. "What are we, dwarrowdams? You're trying to be Mam. It isn't working."

With a roll of his eyes, Kíli grabbed one of Fíli's unused pillows and leaned it on the footboard, sitting cross-legged and reclining in turn. "I'm just trying to help. She'd always say that whenever I used to wake up in the middle of the night."

"Not always. Sometimes she'd just be yelling at you because you wet the bed."

"I never wet the bed. You were always getting nosebleeds, all over the sheets."

"Says the dwarf who crushed his own toe in the doorway and threw up over his own sheets because of seeing his broken toe, you twit."

Kíli gave a chortle. "I'd forgotten about that. My toenail never grew back."

This is safe now, thought Fíli as he grinned back at his brother. This is familiar. If you ignore the the fur-lined blankets and the velvet curtains and the grand chambers, we could have been at home with Mam and a Thorin we didn't fight with. No sleeping ancestors who I could've disappointed. Late nights after a round of drinks and laughing in our room. This is safe.

Looking across at his brother curiously, Kíli leaned over the fastidiously-embroidered blankets as Fíli seemed to drift off once more. "Youwill tell me about them, right, Fí? I swear I shan't tell a soul."

Fíli opened his eyes and studied his brother's expression. He did not want to have to describe the sensation of seeing dream-Kíli's corpse look up at him reproachfully. "I've already forgotten," he lied, and he dragged one arm over his eyes.

"No you haven't—"

"Then what do you dream about then, Kí?" said Fíli, lifting his arm and letting it fall heavily back atop the covers. "If you want to talk so much about dreams, then."

Kíli wrinkled his nose like a child, and slung his arms over the footboard. "Mahal knows I can't ever manage to remember my dreams. I guess I can almost recall last night's—I think I drank a bit too much that night, that's why—"

"Go on, then."

Straining his neck over his pillow, Kíli glanced at the sprawling family tree tapestry behind him on the east wall, at how it ended abruptly with Thorin and Frerin and Dís. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and fingered the silver tassels of his pillow. Its velvet was embroidered with a pattern made to resemble the beards of axes, and he rubbed the back of his neck—it was growing stiff against the cushion. "Do you remember Dad, Fí?"

"Dad?" A recollection of Ífeigr flitted quickly through Fíli's memory—slighter than Thorin, blond-bearded, helping braid his son's hair. And then he remembered Ífeigr dying in their mother's arms as she wept and shook, and Fíli was hardly fifteen years old, barely old enough to understand that his father's strength was failing, and Balin was holding a twelve-inch-tall Kíli, trying to shield his young cousin from such grief. Thorin sat at Dís' dinner table, and his jaw was set and his skin pale, and from now on he would now be the closest thing his sister's sons would have to a father, as Ífeigr expired as Dís knelt cradling him on their knotted carpet before the hearth, he stood up and took Kíli from Balin in one arm and then set his free hand on Fíli's shoulder. "Of course I remember him."

Kíli gave his brother a look, then he lowered his head and looked at his knees. "I don't," he said shortly. "Never mind—" he continued before Fíli could say a word. "I think we should sleep, aye—we don't want Thorin glaring at us across the breakfast table tomorrow because we're sleepy."

"You are trying to be Mam," Fíli remarked, smiling in full. "It doesn't work well on you. I was always the one who had to mother you in Mam's absence."

"Well you have to be all hoity-toity 'Crown Prince' now, Fí," retorted Kíli, pulling out his cushion from behind his neck and tossing it heavily at Fíli, who caught it reflexively. "Someone's got to do it, and it isn't going to be Thorin."

"Aye, you're right on that account." Fíli set the cushion down beside him, yawning. "Go on—go to sleep. I promise I shan't wake you with anymore nonsense nightmares, and if I do, you have my allowance for you to kick my arse tomorrow."

"Only if the cleaning doesn't kick your arse first," said Kíli in turn, and he grinned at his brother as he slid off the bedcovers and hopped across the cold stone floor to his bed. And as Fíli reached for the flames of the candles on his bedside to snuff it out, Kíli leapt into his sheets and looked back at his brother. "And—Fí—"

"What now?"

Kíli paused as he pulled his covers up to his chin. "I think Mam'd be rather proud of how you're straightening everything up, like she would—and if Thorin is disappointed in you, at all, for whatever reason—I think Mam would disagree."

There was a soft sort of silence—uncommon in between them, as they usually spent their hours roaring with laughter, but not unwelcome. And then Fíli gave a sort of half-laugh and shook his head. "Oi, go to sleep, Kí." Then he reached over and snuffed his candle, and then Kíli's, and the two stubs of wax sat smoldering in the darkness.

"'Night, Fí."

"Sleep tight."

"Don't let the spiders bite."

"Or the Thorins."

Kíli gave a snort in the darkness, and as Fíli pulled his covers up once more, the image of the white halls fading in the warmth of the fur-lined blankets and in the scent of ammonia and snorts of laughter in the air.

From the darkness of the hall outside their room stood Thorin, the glow of a candle in one hand and a mug of warm cider he had retrieved from the kitchens—the dumbwaiters weren't in use yet, and his sleep was still troubled. He had been standing in the dim hall before the chamber of his heirs since he had heard their voices seeping through the crack of the door, and only when they spoke no more did he continue down to his chamber. It was strange to be sleeping in Thrór's room—when he had last lived in these halls, the chamber his sister-sons slept in was his.

And as he found his way into his chamber, through his bed curtains and into his sheets, he found he did not want to sleep, for his nightmares were the same as Fíli's—only his sister's husband sat beside Frerin's corpse, and the body of a halfling had recently joined them.

§-§

"You're always in such a hurry, Mithrandir," Legolas remarked carelessly from his branch above the path, leaping from branch to branch with ease. "You are never unwelcome in my father's palace, and I don't believe you'll need to worry about any fighting, now that that slow-witted sword-stealer of a dwarf-lord finally conceded to reason."

Gandalf trotted along on the forest path below, looking up at the young prince above him with mild annoyance. The gentle sun of morning was peering up over the edge of Mirkwood, and it filtered through the trees and was caught in Legolas' golden hair as he smirked down at the old wizard. "I always have reason to worry, Legolas. And you and your people will be very busy quite soon, with the deluge of dwarvish caravans I'm sure is bound to arrive by next spring—I advise, that now that Dol Guldur is mercifully empty, to not let it fill up with such foulness again, unless you want the ire of that slow-witted dwarf-lord (on whose description I shall not correct you) on your case for endangering his people."

"I shouldn't worry about that," said Legolas dismissively, crouching on one branch as Gandalf's horse trotted through the beams of sunlight below him. "You know Captain Tauriel—nothing gets past us with ease."

"A hobbit did," muttered Gandalf with derision. Then, pausing, he brought his horse around to face the elf above him. "And Legolas—now that the Woodland Realm is allied with Erebor—"

"I would hardly say allied—"

"Now that the Woodland realm has established relations with Erebor," the wizard repeated crossly, "I would warn you to look out for conflict in its new government—this shall be the most critical period, and I worry for Erebor's monarch—and for its heirs."

Legolas swung lightly off of his branch and landed deftly in front of Gandalf's horse, his expression flippant. "I wouldn't count on our support, Mithrandir—not for the Naugrim."

His wrinkles deepening, Gandalf shook his head and brought his horse around again, continuing on the path. "One day, Legolas—perhaps we must get used to all of this, first, but one day. Until then, I shall go on—bearing my wisdom and worrying about all of you."

Then Legolas bid Gandalf farewell, and he rejoined his party of scouts as they made their way back to his father's palace, and Gandalf continued west, praying that this sect of Arda would be able to acclimate without him—at least for a little while.

Tilion's ship had descended, and Arien's was rising upon the snow, and in Gandalf's mental chessboard, he moved his piece to the west.


	9. In Forgetfulness

IX – IN FORGETFULNESS

It was a fortnight after the last bodies of the battlefield had been interred when Dáin Ironfoot was finally deemed (by the joint counsel of Óin and his small troupe of healer assistants and volunteers) recovered enough from his myriad wounds to return to the Iron Hills. Of all the wounded warriors taken from the battlefield, Dáin had been in the most critical condition, despite the fact that he was staunchly conscious and active (if not bedridden) during the majority of his recovering period. Thorin's younger and rather more jolly relation had incurred a record amount of stab wounds, had broken at least three ribs, and had been wearing a turban of bandages hiding the mark of Bolg's dying attempt to decapitate the dwarf-lord. Yet he had been insisting in his sickbed for over a week now that he was quite ready to travel back to the Iron Hills. In his absence, it had been governed very capably by Lady Sigrún, Lady of the Hills, assisted by Dáin's two sheltered yet fearsome daughters, Steina and Dátta, renown in Dáin's lordship for being the two "iron fists" to match Dáin's iron foot. Yet Dáin missed them dearly, and after a final checkup, Óin declared Dáin's injuries completely stable.

So the smiling dwarf-lord readied his pony, and followed by a caravan of his officers who wished to return home as more and more of their fellows made a beeline for the Lonely Mountain, they gathered at the Gate of Erebor as its newly-posted guards saluted them in the snow. Of course, the King appeared to say his farewells, along with the rest of his kin; Balin, Dwalin, Glóin, Óin, and even the two Princes under the Mountain appeared to say farewell.

Fíli and Kíli, perhaps, were the saddest to see Dáin leave, for Dáin's cheeriness when they visited him in the sickbay of the Citadel was a welcome distraction from Thorin's characteristic grumpiness. Dáin had thumped them each heartily on the back and had whispered, "Do visit the Hills soon, lads—when you two turn marriageable age, I'll have my daughters introduce you to some of their dwarrowdam friends, aye?" Kíli had given his brother a look of excitement, and Fíli returned it with skeptical amusement.

After traversing down the line of his cousins, Dáin came to Thorin, and with a grin, he clapped Thorin's shoulders and embraced him, smiling up at his grim-faced elder cousin. "Now, cousin Thorin, do look happier to see me leave—I have quite overstayed my welcome, and you won't have to deal with my presence in the sickbay anymore, aye?"

The King's eyebrows knitted together as he grimaced down at Dáin, who was still a head shorter than him. "I still don't quite consider it wise for you to be travelling with such a wound, cousin. And I do believe Lady Sigrún has things under control, if the emissaries she has sent are anything to go by." Lady Sigrún had not only sent emissaries to aid negotiations, but also emissaries sent for the sole purpose to yell at her husband in her stead. Neither she nor her daughters would ride to Erebor as one of such emissaries, for it was seldom acceptable to have dwarf-women travel far from home indeed, yet they had instructed the appointed emissaries well, and upon their arrival, Nori had been bribed by his fellow Company members to sneak down to the infirmary to listen to the damage being done. He came back with a hint of amusement in his shifty eyes and vivid descriptions of Lady Sigrún's chastisement.

Still, Dáin waved his cousin's remarks away. "As much as I love the Lonely Mountain, Thorin, and as overjoyed I am to see it being restored, I must return to my own lordship and see to our affairs and to allocate more dwarves to you for the Mountain's restructuring, aye?" He flashed another smile at stiff-jawed cousin, the light glinting off of an iron tooth.

After a split-second, Thorin acquiesced, and though he did not smile, he let his jaw relax, and he nodded. "And we shall send gold your way, cousin."

Embracing the King, and careful to mind his sore head, Dáin pulled away, and he made as if to mount his pony, before turning back to Thorin with a sheepish grin. "Oh, and one more thing, cousin—" he said, his green eyes bright from underneath his flyaway brows, and he stepped in closer, dropping his voice to a whisper. "Sigrún would have preferred it to be a surprise, when we sent the invitations out, but I can't quite hold it in much longer—"

Thorin's eyes narrowed as he leaned in, catching Fíli's eye as he did so. "Indeed?"

Dáin's smile widened further. "Sigrún—is _pregnant_! Three months in now! We are to have our third child, and I'd say it's more than likely that this bairn could be the heir we've been waiting for!"

Blinking, Thorin pulled back. "All my congratulations, Dáin—I wish you, the lady, and your child well—I apologize if we're taking away your wife's healers and nurses with the business here at the Mountain."

"Nonsense," whispered Dáin, waving the King's uneccessary apology away. "You're all invited to the birthing celebration, when the bairn does arrive—we shall send messengers and make preparations when the nurses deem the child's imminence. I expect to see the entirety of your Company there, especially you and the Princes. You shall have the best guest halls of the Hills. And—I've been considering, if the bairn is a maid, she'll be given the namesake of one of Sigrún's foremothers, but if the bairn _is_ a lad after all—would you share with him your namesake, cousin?"

For a moment, Thorin paused, unusually taken aback. Then he returned to his usual formidable glare. "I doubt you'd want to curse the poor child with _my_ namesake, cousin—"

"I would be _honored!_ Liberator of our familial Kingdom, the axe that wielded its way to victory in the Five Armies—songs will be sung about Thorin Oakenshield, and any son of mine would be blessed to have such a namesake—"

"Milord?!" came the somewhat-irritated voice of one of Dáin's officers—one of the emissaries sent by Lady Sigrún. This one in particular seemed to still be carrying on his duty to harp on the good Lady's husband in her place. "The Hills are fifty leagues away, and if we wish to arrive there by tomorrow evening, we should at least _attempt_ to make a start now."

"Aye, of course, Vakri—many thanks for that reminder." With a wink to his cousin, Dáin mounted his pony (insisting upon having no help from his officers) and brought it about so he could say his final farewells. Gazing up at the peak of the Mountain, from which the sun was just beginning to crawl over from the East, he inhaled, his chest swelling in pride, the hairs of his beard bristling in the cold. "May the Mountain be ever more glorious the next time I look upon it, my kinsmen." Then he brought his pony about to face east, and looked over his shoulder, down at the King. "I do expect your presence at the Hills, my cousin! Don't forget!"

With that, Dáin Ironfoot and his remaining officers made their way through the Gate of Erebor and into the snow, and they rode around the foot of the Mountain due East, where Dáin's lordship lay beyond many leagues of flatland.

And though Dáin never did see the Lonely Mountain again in his lifetime, his son would, and Thorin watched as his cousin receded.

§-§

Some weeks later, as the Mountain buzzed in resurgence to the East, Gandalf found himself in Rhosgobel, nestled amongst the roots and the soil and the many, many animal residents of Radagast's home, as he waited for Radagast to finish boiling a black concoction that apparently was "forest herbal tea." His horse was feeding in the troughs outside, and she would shelter herself in the low-hanging trees, growing like mantles around the large tree of Radagast's home itself. She was very taken by Radagast's prized rabbits, who left their burrows to peer curiously at the Grey Wizard's steed—Radagast seldom rode horses.

His travel down the Old Forest Road had been quite uneventful, save for occasional meetings with Silvan scouts in their green and brown and silver uniforms. They did not accompany him, but they greeted him well and offered him rest and vittles if need be, and he had shared at least two feasts with the different parties he had met along the way. When he neared Rhosgobel, there were fewer and fewer scouts stationed, perhaps because the wood-elves knew that Radagast was generally able to take care of himself, and also because Radagast preferred solitude and fauna to the musical footfalls of elves. And though he had originally planned to pass Rhosgobel, perhaps after greeting his cousin briefly, refueling, and carrying on, something told him to rest—after all, he had not stayed in Rhosgobel for upwards of a century by now.

From inside the creaking warmth of Radagast's home, light tumbled softly through the linen-screened windows and fell into Gandalf's lap as he leaned on a moth-eaten armchair seated before Radagast's hearth. It was very early morning indeed—the sun had just peeked through the ice-blanketed trees, and it glittered golden off the surface of the trodden snow. The birds of the woods had mostly flown southwards for the winter weeks ago—many to the southern borders of Mirkwood, but others went to Wilderland and the Wold, despite the lack of trees in both. The only birdsong to be heard was that of the few birds who had decided to stay in Rhosgobel under the care of the Brown Wizard. From outside, a languid wintery sort of morning breeze tousled the trees that hung above the forest path—the road Gandalf would return to soon enough.

And as Gandalf looked off into the distance, his mind enveloped, a yellow-eyed tabby cat suddenly leapt upon his head, knocking off his hat, and then leapt onto one of the chair's arms, where it sat, preening. In distaste, Gandalf shooed the cat away, and placed his hat where the cat had been standing. He never quite liked cats—he vaguely remembered liking hounds more, from his life many long years ago in Aman. Or perhaps it was just that cats reminded him of Mairon—he distinctly remembered Mairon having similar expressions and mannerisms to cats, before his face was twisted into darkness by his master.

"Radagast—when will your tea be ready?" he called absentmindedly over to the hearth, where Radagast knelt prodding the swinging kettle held in the tongues of flame. Though their meetings were often spread across years, Radagast was the member of his kin and order he was closest too—not that there was much choice to that sentiment. Saruman, as profoundly worldly and knowledgeable he was (and took pride in being), was an eternal skeptic and had far too much disdain in Gandalf for the Grey Wizard to keep a pleasant conversation with him for too long. And their paths had diverged from those of their blue-robed kindred long ago. The last record of contact Gandalf had from them was delivered by a particularly adventurous hawk—a message that said something to the tune of "Our robes are not suited for desert travel, and a friendly Easterling village-girl has offered us proper veils, still in blue." That particular message was sent over nineteen hundred years ago, and they had not heard of their blue brethren since. Still, perhaps they were more successful in their Eastern campaigns than one might have thought—Rhûn was hugely expansive, and its empires numerous, yet far-flung, and perhaps without the Blue Wizards, the enemy's allies would be yet greater.

"In a minute, Gandalf!" Radagast cried, opening the kettle's lid one last time to sprinkle in an unidentified substance he had picked from one of his cloak's many bottomless pockets. "You're in a terrible hurry, and I'd say there was little reason for you to rush so—you did say you'd be staying for a couple of days, whilst the storm blows through the forest? I don't quite see what you're hurrying for, now that the Necromancer has gone from Dol Guldur and the 'eastern fortifications' have been restored, as you say."

"Radagast, my cousin, perhaps you might not see what I must hurry for—my road is long and it has no end," Gandalf grumbled, reaching into the cushions of his armchair to pull out a complaining weasel, who had been burrowing into the velvet. "Your preoccupation with your precious fauna might make you forget that there are bigger fish to fry out there."

"What a crude expression," protested Radagast, who used the sleeve of his robe to wrap the burning surface of his kettle as he poured a tall teacup for Gandalf and an even taller one for himself. He did not eat other animals himself, for all of the creatures of Middle-earth were dear to him, and he did not like the idea of fish frying, even if it was only an expression. "If you are intent on tackling the whole of evil in Arda, I'm afraid you shan't be very successful! You're already doing a fine job as it is." Wiping away a couple of drips on his table with his sleeve, he offered the teacup to Gandalf, who took it.

"Not the _whole_ of evil," said Gandalf distractedly, peering into the contents of his cup. "You know as well as I that we have hardly the power to do so. No—personally, my current concern lies in a gut feeling of mine—something to do with poor Mr Baggins, rest his soul. I'm afraid the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain will not be done with the late burglar yet." Sniffing the strange tea, he found it to smell rather sweet and vaguely spicy, despite its strange texture—it was a muddy sort of brown and had an odd amount of floating grits that Gandalf could not make out. Deciding that he trusted Radagast's brewing abilities, Gandalf took a sip, and found the concoction unexpectedly soothing.

Radagast sat down atop a stump of a stool opposite to Gandalf and took a long, noisy draught. When he exhaled, a distinctly brown steam emitted from his mouth. "Well, it is _your_ business. And it isn't like you have another dark lord to vanquish at the moment or another war between elves and men and dwarves to prevent. I, myself, must be very busy within the next few months! I do believe this winter shall be particularly cold, and I must help all the creatures prepare!" With that, he set down his now-empty teacup and reached in his right sleeve, procuring a sleeping robin. As Gandalf finished off his tea, he watched the Brown Wizard take a deep breath and exhale directly onto the bird, the same brown steam he had exhaled after drinking his tea clouding around the little creature. With a chirp, the robin stirred awake, and Radagast smiled, his eyes crinkling as he tickled the bird's belly. "There we go!" he whispered delightedly, helping the bird stretch its wings. "I found this poor chap nearly frozen to death underneath a log—that's a good dear—his sisters all left for the south already, but it's quite alright, he can stay with me this winter." With a flutter of feathers, the bird leapt from Radagast's grimy fingers and into the air, then he made his way up to the rafters and perched himself amongst a pile of fluffy brown dust.

Somehow, as Gandalf watched Radagast wave cheerily at the robin, something stirred in him that told him that perhaps Radagast had not strayed _too_ terribly far from the initiative of the Istari—though perhaps he did not guide Middle-earth's peoples with a steady hand (well, it isn't as if Saruman even _attempted_ to do that anymore, either), he cared for Middle-earth's fauna with a gentle one. He was, after all, Queen Yavanna's pupil, and perhaps was better suited for confrontations with animals rather than confrontations in-between races. Perhaps straying from the initiative given to them was inevitable for Radagast, and Gandalf could not condemn him for it.

"What I never fully understood about _you_, Gandalf," babbled Radagast in the background of Gandalf's thoughts, "was that you never found yourself a home. They call you 'the Wandering Wizard' because you are precisely that—even old Saruman has his own personal paradise of Orthanc, where he can read all the musty books he wants. The road is your home," he added as he buzzed once more, rummaging through an old chest full of fastidiously-woven blankets, presumably to comfort an old hound whimpering and wrapped in many more blankets under his hammock.

Clearing his throat and stirring his odd tea with one grey finger, Gandalf tilted his head. "Perhaps not my home, Radagast, but certainly my natural habitat—I don't quite have a home, not in Middle-earth—perhaps it is because it is more efficient for me to go anywhere I need to to do what I need to. The Peoples of Middle-earth are quite far-flung, and it's difficult for me to be everywhere at once whilst also having my on home to look after. So I shall have none." _At least_, he added in his head,_ until I my road ends. And I don't believe that shall be for a long while. _Pausing, he took another sip of Radagast's concoction and took his pipe from his sleeve, wiping it on his scarf. Then he looked back up, his eyes going to the white light tumbling through Radagast's windows. He was feeling unusually faraway—perhaps because it was the lack of a present, tangible concern he was focusing wholly on (though the thought of Bilbo's grave weighed in the back of his mind), or perhaps because he had not simply sat and spoken with Radagast without any urgency for a long while indeed. He thought of the tender, white light that spread across the shores of Valinor, and he bit his bottom lip. "Do you think," he began to say, "that you'll ever go back?"

Radagast looked up, his head turning like a rabbit's and his flyaway eyebrows raised. "Back?"

"Indeed. Back."

There was a moment of silence, and Radagast's confusion melted into a sort of melancholy understanding. "Oh. Back."

"I shan't say 'after all this is over,' because our struggle is never over, but after they decree that our tasks have been completed, perhaps—"

"I don't think so," Radagast interrupted quietly, his voice softer and reedier now. "I think I'd stay here forever—caring for the animals and the plants and things. Even after I pass out of memory—out of tales. I think I shall remain."

"If you believe they would deny you, I doubt that—"

"No," Radagast whispered, and his voice was sadder than Gandalf had heard it in a long time. "Gandalf—I can't remember it at all." He had taken the shivering hound into his arms, and was scratching his ears, as if it comforted him. "Valimar. The light of the Trees, when they still bloomed. Sister Melian—I can't recall her face. I can't even Queen Yavanna." He bent his wizened head over the hound. "I don't remember what any of them were like. I suppose I forgot."

Setting his tea aside, Gandalf lit his pipe with a snap of his fingers, then sat in the silence, the wrinkles in his brow creasing further as he looked upon Radagast, hunched and sorrowful before him. No—Radagast was not like him. Unlike Gandalf, Radagast would likely never go to battle—Gandalf wasn't even sure Radagast had ever wielded a sword. And through his love for the creatures that crept through Middle-earth, Radagast had forgotten his initiative. But they had both forgotten the feeling of the Eru's light on their skin.

Finally he spoke, the pipe still in his mouth. "I must confess my memory is hazy as well," he said pensively. "The Trees, I hardly remember—I remember Queen Nienna weeping over them, though—yet I can scarcely remember her visage. And I cannot remember the feeling of the air, nor the Music of the Ainur—when we sang in the choirs."

Radagast brightened. "I do—almost. I remember I was in Yavanna's company and we followed her melody—I was a tenor, but she assigned me to harmony. Melian—she scolded me very much for being off-key—and Yavanna carried on the strain—I sometimes hum it, still, by myself." He hummed a few bars, the lines on his face relaxing.

With a puff of his pipe, Gandalf smiled. Nothing was ever lost completely—not even memories of ages that died many years ago. "I suppose even if we do forget the faces, we shall not forget the song. I, for one, know that even if Mr Baggins will be forgotten, his lament will not go unsung."

Standing and humming still, Radagast went to pour new cups of tea, offering one to Gandalf (even though Gandalf's cup still stood only half-finished at his side). "I've never been to a dwarvish funeral—how was the lament?"

"Quite eventful," Gandalf chuckled, taking the cup and setting aside his pipe. "Master Bofur arranged one of Bilbo's own poems—'The Road Goes Ever On and On,' it was titled—rather fitting, for more than one of us, even if poor Bilbo's road ended there." He took a long draught from the newly-warmed teacup as Radagast sat down on his stump. "I _do _enjoy this tea, Radagast—do tell me your recipe."

"Oh, nothing too terribly fancy—things one finds around in the forest," said Radagast in between hums. He reached under the stump, pulling out a fistful of unidentifiable matter. Opening his palm, he counted off each ingredient. "Crushed blackberries, dandelion root, chamomile, buckwheat honey crystals, a little bit of treacle, and fecal matter, primarily of deer."

Gandalf froze, pulled back, then stared down at his mug. "_Primarily?_"

"I suppose some squirrel gets in there, too, but yes, primarily."

The Grey Wizard groaned, placing a hand on his brow. "I don't suppose you learnt that recipe from Queen Yavanna?"

"Oh no! It's my own."

Eyeing the tea, Gandalf sighed. "I suppose it can't be helped." He took another sip, and tried to enjoy it.

The next morning, he would depart from Radagast's home, and it would be a long while before he had tea with Radagast again. He would continue West, to the edge of Mirkwood, and then he would find the road once more.

Gandalf went on—with many meetings and many farewells, and a flask of Radagast's tea tucked into the folds of his cloak.

§-§

Over the next several weeks, life within the stone of the Mountain was a deep blur of setup after setup necessary to bring Erebor back up and running. The restructuring forces swelled larger as the deluge of Iron Hill caravans continued to flow into the threshold of the Mountain, and soon enough, it was not only volunteers to clean the interiors and warriors to serve as guards and merchants bringing provisions and goods, but by the fourth week, whole families began arriving—dwarrowdams in the guise of dwarf-men included. Most of such families were from the poorer classes of the Iron Hills—miners, porters, hired toughs, scullions, tinkers, cooks, toymakers, the odd farmer—menial laborers looking hungrily for an opportunity to give their family a little more bread for their tables. And though the citadel was not nearly completely ready for settlement yet, and the city far less so, these families pitched in and were offered chambers once they helped clean them.

The King under the Mountain stood graciously at the threshold, greeting each newcomer to the Lonely Mountain with his usual imperiousness and bowing to each one. There were many exchanges of names and family names at the Gate of Erebor with the obligatorily respectful "At your service!" after each, to which the King would respond in his royally haughty voice, "And yours and your family's. Welcome to the Lonely Mountain." Balin and Ori (finally allowed to move from his lap-desk) would be at the King's side, documenting each newcomer and their trade. While some of the members of the Company had already started the fires of the forge with the aid of the warriors of the Iron Hills, now there would be craftsmen to run it and accountants to sort through the massive piles of gold spread untidily around the treasure halls by the dragon. A new slew of cooks and servers joined Bombur and Bofur's kitchen team, and a whole array of miners had arrived to help reorganize the moth-eaten ropes that trailed down into the deep and the dark of the mines, lighting its many lamps as they were lowered down.

Of the dwarrowdams that did arrive, they were far fewer, and all of them daughters or wives of the family they travelled with (unlike the many other bachelors that had arrived), but that was nothing unusual, since dwarrowdams were rarely expected to travel anyway, and always did so disguised, for safety. (Each also had a knife sheathed in their heavy dwarvish boots, as was a dwarrowdam custom, and each knew how to use it. Such knives were often nicknamed damdaggers amongst the dwarves, and they became a symbol of pride for each dwarrowdam—they would compare damdaggers in a similar way to how elf-maids would compare their dainty hairstyles.) Those arriving adult dwarrowdams who were not married always travelled with their families—brothers or older male kinsmen and their families. Once within the Mountain, they would shed their male rainments and only then would wear their work gowns and thick woolen stockings. Of those who worked amongst them (which was the majority, since amongst the poorer classes, every member of the family needed to earn a little extra gold to keep the family afloat), there were seamstresses, hired brutes, scullery maids, waitresses. It was while looking through the records of the new citizens of the Mountain (written in Ori's infallibly neat Cirth) at breakfast one day did Fíli see the occupation "embroideress" written by the name of Erna, mother of three miner sons and grandmother to their six children.

Expecting the kindly grandmotherly-type person that they associated with Lady Eilíf (or, affectionately, "Auntie Eilí," as her young cousins called her) Balin's mother and their surrogate grandmother back in Ered Luin, later that afternoon, Fíli and Kíli came to the section of the upper Citadel floors which housed the servants (which was where the majority of the new arrivers would stay before the city's overhaul was finished), and to the apartment which apparently housed Erna and her brood. Carrying between the two of them the expansive tapestry that detailed their family tree, they were answered by not a sweetly-smiling dwarrowdam elder, but by a wide-hipped, stern-faced lady with a thick grey beard over her wrinkled neck. "Aye, who is it, and what would you ruffians want?"

"Er—" Kíli began, rather unsure whether or not to reluctantly introduce themselves as the Princes.

Catching his brother's gaze, Fíli mouthed _not yet_, and then smiled up at Erna. "We heard that there was a masterful embroideress at this residence," Fíli continued, smiling nervously as he patted the tapestry. "This is a royal tapestry of the line of Durin, and we were hoping we could get it up-to-date—we have quite enough gold," he added, pulling his purse from his belt. It had been filled with gold they had sneaked from the massive treasure hoard below that morning, for neither of them quite knew how to go about asking Thorin for an allowance.

Truthfully, their scheme to complete the tapestry was for Thorin's sake, and it wasn't their own idea in the first place. Balin had recommended a gesture of peace between the King and his Princes—something that showed that the Princes were fostering a true respect and responsibility over their new princedom. Kíli had recalled the tapestry, and so Fíli went off to find an embroideress.

When Erna saw Fíli's full purse, she gave the two Princes a look of vague suspicion, then said, "Well, bring it in then." And though perhaps it made the Princes under the Mountain a little uncomfortable to know that now they actually were going to be _depicted_ as Princes, they were growing very uncomfortable with the way Thorin eyed them over the dinner table—with a mix of disappointment and shame. (Of course, they were reading both signs wrongly indeed—Thorin was not disappointed in them for their lack of ability to step up to the title of Prince; on the contrary, he was quietly very proud of their involvement, if not a little annoyed at the fact that they insisted upon getting down on their hands and knees to clean. The shame was mostly on Thorin's own part, for he recognized the lingering winces of embarrassment and disapproval his sister-sons still had for him.) Though both Fíli and Kíli seemed to walk on eggshells when around Thorin, if this could help them avoid awkwardly tepid dinner conversations with the King, they were glad to do it.

And so, for a fair bit of gold haggled vigorously on Erna's part, the names of the new members of the Longbeard clan would be embroidered on the tapestry using surplus left over in the storerooms from before the dragon came, along with portraits of each member. Fíli, of course, and Kíli, would be embroidered under Dís, and then Gimli their cousin under Glóin. A little cross would be inscribed by Frerin's name, to signify his death, and then, with a golden chain connecting to Dís, their father's name would be embroidered, along with his portrait.

This matter turned very awkward when Erna asked grimly for a description of their father's visage, which was very difficult, since neither Fíli nor Kíli carried a portrait, and if Dís ever had one around the house, they had never seen it. Kíli, who was only a bairn when their father had died, had fully expected Fíli to remember Ífeigr's face, or at least the color of his eyes and beard, but Fíli tried, and found he couldn't remember it at all.

Balin did, and their problem was solved (despite the shame that colored Fíli's face at being unable to remember his father's visage) by asking him over dinner. Yet the King overheard, and he remembered Ífeigr, too.

§-§

At that moment, in the halls of Ered Luin sat Dís, home from a late night of work, and she rummaged in her chest of books (an assortment of volumes found at the marketplace and of tomes from the Mountain's library she had managed to carry with her as she escaped the breath of the dragon) for her sketchbook. It was a wedding present from Ífeigr, and had cost him more than a pretty penny (she had scolded him for such such a frivolous purchase, and then had kissed him, only begrudgingly). It was over six inches thick, its leather binding had been finely waxed, and its thousand vellum pages bound with silken thread. When she had lived as Princess in Erebor, artistry was only one of Dís' many accomplishments as a young dwarf-maid, and she had been tutored under the finest dwarvish artists in the land. Yet now, she only drew for a hobby, and painted little, for oil paints were expensive. Still, her sketchbook was nearly full, and she took up her lead pencil, and opened to a softly-shaded, unfinished portrait of her late husband. After a pause, she turned to the next page and began to draw the visages of her two sons. Fíli with his cheerful sort of maturity and solemn eyes, and Kíli with his keen, foolish grin and his unruly hair.

Then she stopped, and put down her pencil. She only drew Ífeigr because she was afraid that she would forget his face.

She did not want to tell herself that she might forget her sons'.


	10. Chapter 10

Goodness. Er. It has actually been forever since I last updated. That was my own fault; school has a way of getting in the way of things. But here! Have my longest chapter yet! I hope you enjoy it, since it took a good long while to write! Also, thanks to Austrus, my dear dwarrowdam friend, for helping me on dwarvish culture (which I still probably butchered).

* * *

X – IN RECOLLECTION

The political aftermath of having more and more dwarves enter the Mountain combined with the current members of the ruling class (all comprised of the King's former Company and a few of the royalist nobles from the Iron Hills) was greater than the Company members from simpler backgrounds could have ever realized. Pleased enough to serve as the King's loyal officers, quite a few of the members of the Company were more than a little out-of-place in Court. For all of his fastidiousness and care in dress, Dori (currently official Master of Ceremonies for formal events of Erebor), for one, was unable to hold a conversation with a Sir Ogmund from the Iron Hills without becoming overly-defensive of his working-class background. Nori (Chief Organizer of Clandestine Communications, apparently) was an absolute nightmare in fraternization with the few wealthier nobles and merchants who had arrived from the Iron Hills. While such dwarves had entered the Mountain for the purpose of reestablishing businesses and trade, Nori had made it his purpose to "inspect their belongings," nicking quite a few valuables in the process. Dwalin, a dwarf-noble by birth, was incorrigibly blunt in his conversations with an Iron Hill dwarf-lord who had asked him if he would be able to trust hired mercenaries to protect his household and their valuables as they moved into Erebor. ("And are mercenaries somehow less _trustworthy_ than your normal dwarf, eh?") Balin was forced to spend a long time scolding his brother and Glóin for being insensitive in politics as more dwarf-lords arrived. Glóin's fiercely royalist beliefs clashed rather badly one day with the rather mercantilist beliefs of a recently-arrived woolen hood merchant in a loud argument in the Greatest Hall; it ended in two broken fingers and the ruination of Glóin's own detachable party hood, which the merchant had acidly offered to replace with one of his own.

And yet, undoubtedly the most difficult political positions to be in were those of the two newly-"crowned" Princes under the Mountain. Their very positions were to be scrutinized indeed, especially the Crown Prince's—they must be ready to don King's burden at the drop of a coin. They were also expected to be the most publically active; in Court, logistics, and for the people. And they were also expected to look and act the part. Along with the kingly burdens, the latter two were the most difficult of all, especially for Fíli and Kíli.

The first few weeks of arrivals had little bearing on their public images; most of the arrivals assumed that the two young dwarves directing cleaning, sweating, and mopping corridors were merely officers of the King; lowly members of his former Company. Combined with the fact that they hardly spoke to the King, Thorin seemed to have given up on growling at them to stand by his throne; thus few dwarves even saw them within the King's vicinity, although Balin was often spotted talking earnestly with them during their breaks. They also never dressed in the proper princely raiment the King had requested to be cleaned for them, partially because they were quite confused at how to wear _all those pieces_, and partially because they were both worried that they would accidentally ruin them one way or another, especially whilst cleaning. (Dís used to be a monster about their ruined clothes; such accidents happened often back in Ered Luin, as few weeks could go by without the baking of mud pies or the adventuring through brambles.) Thus the suede-bodied, fur-trimmed doublets (in royal blues) were stuffed into their wardrobes in exchange for sensible muslin shirts and leather surcoats, and they appeared like any other dwarf of the Mountain, except for their faces.

The fairly common, functional appearances of the Princes under the Mountain ended up causing a deal of contention as word began to spread about the identities of those two young dwarves who bore vague resemblance to the Longbeards. Though Erna the embroideress (whom they had secretly commissioned to complete the family tree tapestry for Thorin's sake) was stern and tight-lipped, her sons were less trustworthy. And as the days went on, the lads found that more and more stares were being directed their way in the corridors, in the kitchens, and in the Great Halls, even as they dashed about, maps of the Mountain in hand, directing soap to one level and lye to another.

"See? You can see the Longbeard nose on one of 'em—"

"Don't be a prat, the Longbeards have bigger noses than _that_—"

"And they act so common—nay, can't be. Who would their father be? The King's unmarried."

"If they _are _the Princes, then by Mahal's beard, the King better procure a finer heir somewhere else."

Such contention came to a head in a particularly unfortunate incident in the Court on the day that Erna had finished the embroidery of the Longbeard family tree, completed with every current relation of theirs, from ginger-haired cousin Gimli to the iron-fisted daughters of Dáin. Fíli's illustration had turned out quite well indeed, his silhouette mirroring his mother's, but Kíli's profile was more akin to Ífeigr's, which Erna was unable to capture as well. Yet they were pleased nonetheless (and were pleased that Thorin may be pleased and perhaps there would be fewer awkward, stifled conversations at dinnertimes), and they paid Erna very handsomely for her efforts. Rather satisfied, Fíli carefully rolled up the tapestry, and Kíli insisted upon carrying it to the King straightaway, so he could be impressed with them in his throne room.

Unfortunately, the passage they took was a back passage, and thus they barged in upon the throne room from behind the King's throne, where they could be seen by all, and they just happened to enter whilst the throne room was filled with squabbling courtiers.

The two Princes froze, the tapestry under their arms, as the entirety of the throne room fell silent and fixed their eyes onto them. There were at least a hundred courtiers present—perhaps fifty of them newly-arrived nobles from the Iron Hills. And after a moment of staring at the disheveled-looking Princes, they exploded into rows amongst themselves.

"Aye, I was right! They _are_ the King's fatherless sister-sons—old Erna's sons told me so!"

"What a damned farce, 'Princes' popping up like beggars behind the throne—"

"Sister-sons? Who would be their father? I can hardly see a lick of Longbeard in them."

"They're the King's sole heirs, Mahal help us…"

"Their father must have died with shame at the sight of their build—looks like the Longbeard physique wasn't bequeathed to them!"

"Seems like the Princess bedded an elf—look at the pansy face on that one!"

It was only when the King stood up to bellow very wordily into the crowd when Balin had the opportunity to swoop in and shepherd the lads away, as if they were children frightened by an imposing animal. Kíli was spluttering incoherently and indignantly at the rudeness of the self-proclaimed nobles—upon their sight, he had frozen, but as Balin dragged him and his brother away, he had begun to voice his anger. Fíli, who would have likely handled the situation quite well if his own self-esteem hadn't been so precarious in the last several weeks, could summon none of his original charisma to at least project the good-naturedness his mother had taught him. He simply sent uncomfortable glances back to the door to the throne room, wondering how angry Thorin was at their imprudence, the forgotten tapestry slipping from his fingertips.

From his side, Kíli was still grumbling away at the remarks of the Court in their first public appearance as Princes under the Mountain. "An _elf_ indeed, Mahal's beard! As if Mam would ever _speak_ to an elf…"

Yet as they receded, Fíli's ears rang with the word _fatherless_, and for a moment, he could almost remember Ífeigr's face, and he bowed his head as he and his brother slunk to the kitchens to have a few afternoon drinks.

§-§

Ífeigr had neither been killed in war, nor in an accident, nor in a night raid by goblins. His marriage to Dís was actually (at least at first) orchestrated on Thorin's part—Ífeigr had been one of his fellow smiths in the dusty, smog-filled smithy he was forced to work in at Ered Luin. Less broad in the shoulders than Thorin and more timid in mannerism, Ífeigr did have some claim to noble ancestry, despite the fact that his father had turned to gambling and his mother was forced to leave him and take care of her son on her own, leaving them in relative poverty. He was a little ruddier than the average dwarf, with a golden beard that was usually covered in the ash of the forge, and Thorin first gained respect for him when Ífeigr had gotten into a violent political debate with an anarchist in their local pub. While the anarchist (who was substantially brawnier than Ífeigr indeed) decried both the monarchy and the nobility, Ífeigr rushed to defend it, his ale in hand. Thorin had overheard the earnest, flaxen-haired dwarf's argument, and as the anarchist was just about to raise a fist in anger, Thorin cleared his throat very loudly to announce his presence as he stepped in between Ífeigr and his would-be attacker.

"I commend you on your loyal defense of the descendants of the Fathers, my friend," Thorin said lowly as they exited the pub, the offending anarchist lying dazed, a black eye from Thorin's fist forming upon his skin, "but I would advise for you to recruit good company when faced with such an opponent."

Ífeigr had only looked up at Thorin with solemnity. "I don't mind taking a beating for what I believe in—still, I thank you for your intervention." Then he paused, and gave Thorin a look of vague recognition. "We work in the same forge, aye? I don't believe I know your name."

From this chance encounter, Thorin made a friend in Ífeigr, who was sincerely pleased at finding an ally in their village in the Blue Mountains—after a few ales, Thorin learned a good deal about him, and granted him respect indeed. From their workplace, Thorin learned that Ífeigr was a stubbornly hard worker, had little to no humor (he never understood most jokes, which was quite alright for Thorin, who seldom told them), was eternally honest and solemn, and only smiled at the thought of good food, his poor dead mother, and a job well done. In visage, Ífeigr's features were softer than Thorin's, and more delicate—not very noble, but astonishingly good-natured. He loved all facets of heraldry and nobility and lore; in his spare time, he would seek out old volumes and historical manuscripts and would read and memorize every dwarvish legend that existed. And though he did not seem to be a fighter, he was an especially good marksman for a dwarrow, and relished in tales of yore and of victory and the peace that came afterwards. When Thorin introduced himself in full—as Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór (rightful King under the Mountain, but he did not have to add that, because Ífeigr exclaimed it just as he finished reciting his patriarchal history)—Ífeigr gasped and held him with a kingly reverence from that day on. Ífeigr then went on to ask about Thorin's familial line, then about the fateful battle of Azanulbizar, which was over forty years ago, by then. So Thorin mentioned his sister, and Ífeigr's face lit in recognition. Princess Dís, Lady of Carven Stone, had been very popular many years ago in the Mountains, and word of her beauty and strength had travelled far. Since they had come to Ered Luin, unlike Thorin, Dís had been quieter about her identity, sometimes dressing in male raiment for safety in unfamiliar environments, as dwarrowdams were wont to do. Ífeigr blushed when her name was spoken, and Thorin was quick to notice.

As they shared a drink a few weeks later (as it took Thorin long stretches of time to form palpable trust for others), Thorin decided that he quite liked Ífeigr, in all his solemn respectability, and he invited him to supper—a privilege up to then reserved for other Longbeards, and Longbeards only. In alarm, Ífeigr refused initially—to dine with a King-in-exile (not to mention a Princess-in-exile as well) would be too above his status. Yet Thorin insisted—loyal Balin would be there indeed, and perhaps a few of their cousins. So Ífeigr conceded, his face reddening, and he bowed deliberately as he said his goodnights. Now it was up to Thorin to tell his sister to prepare an extra meal at supper on Saturday eve.

§-§

Despite the fact that their current home in their middling-sized, nondescript Ered Luin village had no banquet hall to feast in, Dís was quite used to playing hostess many an evening to old family friends. Her cooking, though not quite skillful, was passable and hearty, and Dís had an eye for the best produce her hard-earned money could buy, and it was quite popular for her bachelor cousins. She had few female friends in this village, mostly because she was never a socialite and was seldom friendly, but she did enjoy the company of her kin when they came around. Balin was almost always a caller for supper, daily—as Thorin's confidante and oldest surviving friend and cousin, he was seldom absent from the household Thorin seemed to head (even though it was quite clear that Dís managed its upkeep and finances). Óin was another frequent caller; his chosen profession as a sort of jack-of-all-trades apothecary allowed for a lot of frequent travel, and he dropped in at least twice a month for a good long chat. Dwalin and Glóin, who were more often in larger northern towns working as fearsome mercenaries, only were at their dinner table around once a month. Balin and Thorin sometimes called on them in turn, too, and Dís would be left alone in peace to her reading and drawing and sparring practice and whatnot. Yet if Dís was truthful, she thoroughly enjoyed having a full dinner table, and despite the fact that she would often need to chastise its occupants (very, very loudly) for one thing or another, she was always very pleased to see her cousins wipe their boots clean of the dirt of the road and to begin helping set out the spread.

Still, Dís' suspicions were more than a little piqued on that Friday morning when her brother told her over breakfast bread-and-butter that he had invited another dwarf to supper the next evening—one whom he thought "very highly" of. With oil and fat dripping from her wooden spoon into her stew, Dís gave her brother a scoffing sort of look as she pushed back her neatly-braided locks (they were a darker black even than that of her brother). She knew Thorin too well to have no misgivings about his sudden invitation of another dwarf (and an outsider to their family) to supper.

"And how long have you been so well acquainted with this dwarrow, brother?" she said icily, tapping her spoon on her pot dangling above the fire of the hearth to let loose the remains of stew from it. "I've never seen you so quick to trust." (It was true—it would take most of the members of the Company several months to a year to win Thorin's invitation to supper.)

Thorin stood from the table to begin putting away his dishes as his sister stirred the fire with her poker. "Long enough to fairly judge his character—a harder-working, more earnest dwarf I have never met. And if you trust my judgment as much as I trust yours, aye, then I'd say you would find him in your favor, too, Dís."

Dís stood up, placing her spoon in her apron pocket, the red-hot poker hanging at her side. "Would he? Then he should be aware of who we are, shouldn't he? It's not like you like to hide it," she added, rolling her eyes as she thought of how Thorin liked to introduce himself. (It was for the reason of avoiding trouble that Dís had chosen this specific village to settle in a little over twenty years ago—it was small enough so that one does not have to be suspicious of his neighbor, yet large enough so that one's identity could be kept private. So she was always irritated when Thorin stepped out to introduce himself as Durin's heir—all pride aside, it was hardly practical to have their royal identities out in the open.)

Thorin scowled as he wrapped their day-old bread in cheesecloth. "Of course he knows."

"Let me rephrase that." Dís turned to face her brother, one hand on her hip and the other still clutching the poker. "Does he know who _I_ am?"

Thorin opened his mouth, closed it, and then resigned to giving his sister a glare. He saw the suspicion in her eyes confirmed.

"I _knew _it!" Dís cried, and she set the poker down with a clang. "A stranger at my dinner table would seldom be invited out of the goodness of my brother's heart unless he was planning to raise an army. You're planning to _marry me off_ to some hapless fool you met in the pub!"

"I had _no such intentions_," Thorin growled back, even though it was quite a lie. Despite his height difference with his sister, Dís seemed to grow in stature whenever she was irked, so even as he looked down at her, it felt very much as if he was looking up. "No matter how strange it might seem to you, dear sister, I find Ífeigr a fellow with whom I can converse, and perhaps if you let loose some of that steam from your swollen head then you might find him—"

"Bollocks," Dís grumbled, narrowing her bright eyes. "I am well aware that you consider me a burden, darling brother, even though I make half of the income of this household, and since you refuse to learn how to cook, _I_ have to do that too! You think that handing me off to a half-penny dwarrow whom you've only known for a month would get me off your back."

"Is it a _crime_ to introduce your unwedded sister of marriageable age to a hardworking, honorable dwarf-lord's son? I met him when he was attempting to defend the dwarvish monarchies from a black-toothed anarchist—if anything else, you must admit that his politics are certainly respectable—"

"Do you think I give a damn whether or not his politics are _respectable_? By Mahal, it's the Third Age and yet moronic dwarf-lords still think that their sisters need to be married off—"

"I'm not _marrying you off_—" Thorin spat, but his outburst was interrupted by Dís' furious hand-waving.

"_And yet another thing_," cried Dís, who seemed to Thorin to have grown to monstrous size in her annoyance, "what sort of ostentatious, grandiose name is _Ífeigr?_ Does no one have sensible names anymore? Even if somehow your moronic scheme works and we _do_ marry, what would our sons be named? Ífragger? Ífrogger? What sort of bloody foolishness is _that?_"

By then, it was already six, and sunlight was beginning to break through the thin curtains. So Thorin thought it wisest to leave for the forge then, and to let Dís shrink back to her normal, formidable height before he brought up the subject again.

§-§

Perhaps it is important to mention that poor Ífeigr had been rather infatuated with Princess Dís of Carven Stone ever since adolescence. Though female dwarf-royals were seldom renowned in public, and though far more dwarves knew the names of the Princes of Erebor than the Princesses, Dís was remarkably well-known for her rather impressive array of accomplishments, even while she and her family were in exile from the Mountain due to Smaug's presence. Even before her second score, whilst the King of the Longbeards ferried his family across Middle-earth, Princess Dís was said to be the finest musician, artist, and fighter a young dwarrowdam could ever hope to be—not to mention the loveliest, indeed. When King Thrór and his family came to dwarvish towns, villagers would always flock to catch a glimpse of her visage. She had a beard that was the envy of every adolescent dwarrowdam who saw her. Her face had all the majesty and nobility of her mother and father, and it was so alike to Thorin's face that their expressions were almost eerily similar. Yet her skin was smooth and fair and her cheeks always heartily blushed, and even as young lass she was beautiful.

For perhaps fifteen years after the dragon razed Erebor and the remainder of Durin's folk spread out in the widening world, the now-motherless Dís was sent to live with her cousins in the Iron Hills, whilst her father, grandfather, and two foolish brothers tried to regroup their armies, planning all the while to retake Moria to the West. In those days, she was lonely, despite the presence of her kin, so she refashioned herself out of stone and became weathered and strong, and when Náin and Dáin and their warriors set out to meet Thrór at Khazad-dûm, she marched with them, dressed in the raiment of a dwarf-lord. Yet before that, when she was barely twenty-five, a thirty-year-old Ífeigr sat dolefully on the back of his father's caravan on the way to the Iron Hills.

Ífeigr's father, Ífeigrun, a dwarf-lord and merchant of fairly insignificant standing, had come to the Iron Hills on trading business, and had forced his only son to accompany him. It had taken them months for their caravans to reach the Hills from their halls in Ered Luin, but Ífeigrun had been counting on this business transaction to save his floundering estate (from his own foolishness with his money). And despite the fact that the transaction was to be a failure and he and his mother w0uld leave his drunken father the next year, that voyage was made glorious by the hour in which Ífeigr was able to set his eyes upon the loveliest dwarrowdam of the generation.

With difficulty, Ífeigr managed to wriggle from his father's grasp in the capitol of the Iron Hills whilst Ífeigrun haggled incessantly with stoic dwarf-merchants with their hands firmly clutching heavy purses. And ever the lover of history, Ífeigr made his way to the city's bibliotheca (which was not as well-stocked as Erebor's own library had been, yet it was perfectly serviceable). Dís herself had escaped the company of the other dwarf-lasses of the Hills' Citadel, and hid herself in the corners of the library, tales of old spread across her lap.

And when Ífeigr peeked around a tall bookshelf labeled with the Cirth for _R_, to find a certain index titled _Royals of the Longbeards_, he froze to see the Princess of the Longbeards herself.

It would be rather unfair to say that he fell in love with her at first sight, for he was barely old enough then to go to war in a dire battle—hardly old enough to even think about matrimony, indeed. He did not know, of course, that she was the Princess of Erebor yet, and only figured it out when a frazzled attendant came rushing around one of the bookshelves, crying Dís' name. Yet he saw her and he saw the light from the windows glow yellow and gold in her raven hair, and when the glow fell upon her face, she was beautiful and strong and scowling as she turned the page of the book she was determined on devouring. And when he saw her, there was a sudden stirring in his heart that he did not quite understand.

All in all, he only ended up seeing her for about forty-five seconds, for the attendee was quick to find her, but he lingered where she had sat and marveled at her beauty for many hours afterwards.

No—he did not fall in love with her until much later, when she was ninety-seven years old and he was a hundred and two, and she was commanding her supper table as if she was commanding an army. Her face had become sterner, and her hands more calloused and worn, yet she was more beautiful for all that she had seen, and when she spoke and laughed, her voice echoed like song in boundless caverns. Her hair was still coal-black and raven, and her eyes were still a blazing blue, and as he heard her speak throughout that Saturday supper, he realized that he loved her, well and truly, by the time he finished his stew. That was going to be a problem, for as of then, he had not said a word to her during supper.

§-§

When Dís finally returned from work that Friday evening (primarily, at that time, she spun wool into yarn at home, yet she also took many odd jobs that were available to her—that particular day, she had been helping birth a child, and was rather exhausted), Thorin had returned earlier than she had, and he was stoking the fire when she tossed her cloak onto its peg before she sat down at the table. Thorin had already ladled out a pair of bowls of the stew Dís had been preparing, and he gave her a look of vague apprehension (muddled with a great deal of belligerence) as he sat down beside her and offered her a spoon.

Giving her elder brother a look of mock disdain, Dís grinned and took it. "Do dig in. I'm afraid it isn't quite a feast, but I made enough to last for tomorrow night's supper, as well—even if we do have an extra mouth."

Thorin relaxed, and he even allowed himself to grin back at his little sister as he lifted his bowl to his mouth to drink the broth. Dís did the same, and they set down their bowls at the same time. Taking up his own spoon, he fished out a rogue carrot. "No Balin this eve, I'm afraid," he said gruffly between mouthfuls, glancing over at the wooden chair opposite them, which would usually be filled by a rather hungry and appreciate Balin. "He left the forge early today to meet Dwalin and Glóin at the northern outpost—they'll be joining us for supper tomorrow, along with Óin, who shall also be in town, apparently."

"Good," said Dís absentmindedly, sniffing her stew with a look of dissatisfaction. "More company to distract me from your idiotic invitation." When Thorin snorted, Dís gave him a look, her brow furrowed and her nose scrunched. "You didn't even tell me how _old_ your new friend is—he could be fifteen score, for all I know. He could have rotting teeth and an unclean neck with folds of warty skin. I wouldn't put it past you."

Thorin would have laughed, if his mouth was not full of Dís' stew. After swallowing, he gave her a look of mock indignation. "If you must know, he's your age—five score. And despite the smog of the forge, he keeps himself cleaner than the average dwarf. Perhaps he'd be a bit too slender for your taste, but I'm quite unfamiliar with your preferences."

"At least you got _that_ right, brother," Dís said lowly, uncorking a bottle of ale left on the table and taking a swig.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, while Thorin was thinking and Dís was ruing her brother's immense foolishness. Then Thorin spoke.

"I hope you have more trust in my wish for your happiness, sister," he began, his eyes averted from his sister's as he spoke, "and I hope you know that I shall not scheme against you—"

"That's a lie," Dís said bluntly, but not indignantly. And indeed, Thorin's motives for requesting Ífeigr's presence at supper were not completely pure, as there were more than a few advantages for him if his sister were to marry and bear sons. "You _try_ to scheme against me, but you're my brother and thus it seldom works."

There was another pause, and then Thorin looked up at his sister's eyes, identical to his own, and both pairs narrowed at the same time. "Dís," he said, suddenly even more serious than usual, "don't you ever want to marry?"

Dís sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Brother, you should know that a great deal of other dwarrowdams these days prefer not to—"

"I'm not addressing 'other dwarrowdams,' I'm addressing you."

"Perhaps." Shoulders slumping, Dís looked at her brother, her expression wry. "I love children and whatnot, but I doubt I'd ever find a dwarf to suit me. Especially not a dwarf whom _you'd_ push me to marry."

"By Mahal, Dís, I'm not _trying to get rid of you_—" said Thorin with a degree of exasperation, scowling down into his stew, but Dís' dull laugh interrupted him.

"I know," she said, and she looked at him with a mix of distaste and fondness. "But first, you are my brother. And second, you are a complete and utter arse. And despite the fact that I know you consider me an equal, you _would_ prefer it if I wasn't always there harping on you—don't lie."

"Well, perhaps it's hard to miss you when you're always _chastising_ me—I _am_ the elder brother, remember that. And I would dispute the second, but—"

"You would _try_ to dispute it, but dearest Thorin, you are probably the biggest arse in existence. Except for the elves, of course, but let's not get onto that. And it's not just because sometimes you'd prefer my absence, no—" Then she leaned over to rest her chin on her brother's shoulder, and when he glared down at her, she looked up at him with disdain, and he faltered. Then she pushed him, physically, and he nearly slipped off his chair with a grunt. As her brother regained his stability, huffing in indignation, Dís watched him dryly. "You want me to have a son whom you can turn into a little-you—with whom you can share the burden of being 'Durin's heir.' This isn't about my happiness, brother—it's about you and your obsessions."

Thorin turned to glare at his sister once more, but his glare never worked on her, for she could mimic his expressions to the finest detail, and whenever he glared at her, the glare was merely reflected.

Then he spoke, and only one word fell from his mouth. "Yes." He agreed.

Dís was right about everything about him. However, she would not be right about Ífeigr.

§-§

They were married two years later. The service was humble, yet the dinner afterwards was grand, and included all of the living members of the Longbeard clan making their living in Ered Luin. And though Ífeigr had found it very difficult to make a sound in the first dinner he shared with his future in-laws, he laughed and blushed and sang with them at this one.

The first supper was quite painful to sit through—he was forced to sit across the prettiest dwarrowdam of a generation as she roared at her cousins to "_keep the soup in your mouths and off the tablecloth,"_ and he had absolutely no idea what to say. He did not quite fit in with Thorin's family, at least not yet—he had neither their stature nor their muscular build, nor a beard with the same degree of virulence as theirs. He was not very sociable, and normally went to pubs to discuss politics rather than to engage in singing songs with others. And though his politics were shared by Dwalin, Glóin, Balin, and Óin, the first two were wrapped up in a stern conversation with Thorin over their stew about the spread of smugglers, kidnappers, and the like into smaller towns. The latter two were chatting to Dís, who was looking at the both of them with disapproval and suggested that she introduce them to more dwarrowdams. (She was more alike to her brother than she would like to admit.) Worst of all, perhaps, was the fact that Dís seemed quite set on ignoring his presence. She had not said a word to him after introductions, and he was feeling rather lost and helpless as he concentrated on finishing his stew.

After Thorin pulled out of his conversation with his cousins, he leaned over the corner of the table to whisper in his sister's ear. "Thoughts on the guest, dearest sister?" he asked, his tone rather resigned to the fact that his sister was as stubborn as he was.

"He's dry, humorless, dull, pretentious, and refuses to _crack a smile_," she hissed back, and waved him away.

And so the evening carried on that way, with Ífeigr too nervous and reserved to strike up much of a conversation with anyone at all, and he found himself sitting uncomfortably on one of Dís' armchairs as the rest of Dís' cousins procured their instruments to play and sing. It was only when Dís gave him a pompous look from across the room and said aloud, "So, does our new guest know how to play?" did he look up. _By Mahal she's speaking to me—she's well and truly speaking to me, if only Mother had taught me how to talk to lovely dwarrowdams I might not look like such a fool—_

"Play?" he managed to repeat, blinking in distracted confusion.

"Aye," Dís said, rolling her eyes. "Play _music_." _What a plodding buffoon—he's likely tone-deaf_, she thought, leaning forward to smile smugly at her guest.

There was a pause. "I—I do," Ífeigr said, biting his lip. "I'm a good deal out of practice, though."

"Nonsense," Dís said airily, and she procured her own harp (her sturdy wooden model—rather less ostentatious than her brother's golden relic saved from the Mountain) and offered it to him. "Go ahead. Play, if you can."

He blinked for a moment, then gave a sheepish short of smile, and thanked his drunkard father for many years of mandatory harp lessons. He took the harp and played, and Dís was forced to go through the very unfortunate sensation of being in the wrong. It was to be a trend that would be repeated in the matter of Ífeigr.

At the end of the night, Thorin would look at her sternly and say "Do you like him?" and Dís would callously say "No." She was to be wrong about that.

A fortnight later, Dís was planning another dinner, and Thorin would ask "Will you invite him?" and Dís would sharply say "No!" and she was certainly wrong about that.

A year later, Ífeigr's mother would fall ill, and Thorin would say over supper "Would you support him and visit her?" and Dís would obstinately say "No." And she proved herself wrong the next day.

At Ífeigr's mother's funeral, Thorin whispered to his sister "Would you comfort him?" and Dís would hiss back "No," but she saw Ífeigr weeping and saw the sorrow in his eyes. And as she embraced him, her fingers in his hair as he shook and sobbed on her shoulder, she decided that this was a situation that it was acceptable to be wrong in.

Then an evening the year after that, after Ífeigr walked Dís home, Thorin would look at her with a sort of unusual self-satisfaction in his eye during supper and asked "Do you love him?" and Dís would grumble very sternly "No," and Thorin would know she was wrong.

And then, one night, after Ífeigr and Dís had spent a long time conversing over dwarf-lore and politics, and after he very unexpectedly leaned in (blushing furiously) and whispered something in her ear, Thorin would flash a rare grin at his sister and say "Are you marrying him?" and Dís would cry "No!" and Thorin knew she was wrong and she knew she was wrong because there was a delicately-forged golden engagement bead that Ífeigr had spent many nights crafting hidden in a lock of her hair.

One should note that Dís was only wrong at these moments in that span of two years. She was right at nearly every other point, and still possesses a far, far higher proportion of right-to-wrong moments than Thorin ever would. It was only in her judgment of Ífeigr was she ever wrong, for she found that he would come so alive in certain conversations that it would be a feat to keep up with him. When he spoke of things he loved he would smile wider than she had seen any dwarf smile before, and when he sang his voice was warm and bright and gentle, and when they debated over politics and ideology and whatnot she finally had an intellectual match with whom to debate with, and though she never told him that she loved him, not once, not even after they were married (the stubbornness of the Longbeards is legendary), there was no one who could make her happier than he, and at least for now, Thorin could celebrate his current victory.

Within the first year of their marriage they were to have a son, and they had a very difficult time naming him when he arrived, ruddy-skinned and yellow-haired and looking almost exactly like his mother. "Nothing ridiculously frivolous like your name, my blockheaded fool," she said drowsily as she handed off her son to her husband a few hours after the birth. (She was not one for romantically-inclined endearments.) "Something sensible and proud and noble. Without any airs to it."

Ífeigr, who had cried far more during the process than his wife had during labor, smiled through swollen eyes and braids askew, sitting at the foot of Dís' bed with their firstborn son in his arms, twirling his fingers through the little golden curls. "Oh, I wouldn't know," he whispered, letting the child grab his thumb in his sleep. "Shall we name him after one of your forefathers?"

"Mahal, no," Dís grunted, placing an arm over her eyes. "As much as I love them, I don't want him to be named after a king, when he shan't ever be one now." Then she looked up at her husband, and saw him framed in the light of the hearth, holding their child and weeping, just slightly. Then she smiled. "Something a little more like you. I like the 'í' in the first part, but the rest of your name is admittedly a little absurd, Ífeigr. So it shall be 'í'-something."

"Perhaps something to honor Thorin," Ífeigr suggested absentmindedly, cradling the child's head in the crook of his elbow. "It was through him that I found you."

"Nay, spare us," Dís moaned, yet she laughed as she threw her head back upon her pillow. "I will in no way ever name one of my children after my brother dearest. It would only inflate his swollen ego, and I would be admitting that he was right all along."

Then Ífeigr's free hand found its way to Dís', and he brought her hand to his lips as he held his son close. "Fí," he said, kissing her hand and squeezing it tightly. "If you like the 'í' part of my name and you wanted something simple. Would that be alright?"

"A single syllable?" Dís protested, but she smiled as brushed her raven hair from her eyes. "Fíli, I'd say. Something kind-sounding. And cheerful. I'd like that."

So Fíli grew quickly, and he was beloved by all, and his father adored him deeply, and his mother taught him to be kind, and Thorin rejoiced loudest of all, and not only because he was right and because now he had an heir, but because his sister beamed with joy at the sight of her son laughing, and because he was well and truly proud for the first time in many years. (Also, he spent many of his free hours telling tales of the Lonely Mountain to the bairn—all out of earshot of his sister, who didn't approve of this early "sowing of the seeds of gold lust," as she acidly called it.)

And then when Fíli was five and his chin was covered with curly fuzz, another son was born unto Dís and Ífeigr, and this child had dark eyes and a face that resembled his father a little more than his mother, and as soon as the child was presented to his brother, Fíli would not leave him, and their parents embraced with the two little dwarrowlings in their arms, and Thorin's rare laughter was legendary that night.

So it was for twelve years for Dís in that little village in Ered Luin. And though Thorin would have bought larger halls in the center of town for his sister and her husband and his sister-sons, Dís preferred the simplicity, and their household was filled with yells and laughter and the sound of harp-song and fiddle strings as Fíli grew old enough to learn, and the battering of wooden swords against each other as Uncle Thorin taught the wee ones to fight (aided often by an adoring Balin, as well as Dwalin, Glóin, and their other cousins when they managed to drop by). And Dís roared with laughter with her sons and yelled at the top of her lungs at her brother and was infinitely content with her earlier errors in her judgment of her now-husband, and Ífeigr swam in the love and the family he had been missing for many years. And one day he told his wife that he had seen her in the Iron Hills many years ago, and had fallen very hard for the lovely, stone-willed dwarrowdam with fierce, stubborn eyes that darted across a book in a library, and Dís blushed, told him he was a fool, and kissed him very hard, and laughed whilst doing so.

It ended one night, after Thorin and Ífeigr had gone to the next town over to barter with men over the pieces they had forged. And this time, Thorin was unable to save Ífeigr in the bar fight, and he rode wildly home in the mud and the rain with Ífeigr's arms, limp on his shoulders, and in the darkness and the firelight he stumbled down the cobblestone streets, his eye swollen shut from a well-placed mannish punch, carrying Dís' husband and hollering for his sister as he finally reached their doorstep.

Balin opened the door, little Kíli sleeping in his arms, and Dís came thundering to the doorway at the sight of her husband, Fíli trailing at her heels. But Ífeigr was already gone, and Thorin was weeping in fury as Dís pulled her husband's body into her arms and collapsed upon the carpet before the hearth, shaking as she smoothed his flaxen braids away from his face. And as Balin desperately shook Thorin, over and over asking what had happened, Dís' sons hid behind their uncle and did not understand.

And as the fire burnt away to embers, Dís still sat, hunched over her husband's body and shivering. "_Gone again gone again how wise and unwise I am it never lasts I wish I had told you I wish you had stayed now my sons are fatherless just as we are I could not have saved you but I forgot that you were mortal and I am wrong again wrong again_—"

§-§

Of that night, Dís' sons do not recall their father's body—only their mother's tears.

Yet Thorin remembers the body, and he does not look at his sister-sons across the table at suppertime.


End file.
